#though the older ones have the other issue of sexist character design

[lordrataxesofrhinoland]

been thinking a lot about coco lately

ok so here goes: I feel like the reason I find her so easy to dislike is because of something I call “the Tiff Effect” (named after Tiff from the anime Kirby: Right Back At Ya, whose writing suffers from the same issues). Basically, the people who write Crash dialogue are not confident in their ability to write female characters, so they basically just give Coco no negative traits and rarely put her in peril so as to not appear sexist. On top of that, she’s paired with a main male protagonist who doesn’t speak, so she kind of has to cover for the both of them, being forced into a somewhat parental role. It doesn’t help that she’s also supposed to be this super genius, so any kind of writing that reflects her age, especially with regards to life experience, is bound to feel incongruous when compared to her prowess at building and operating contraptions.

I don’t think anyone really understands who Coco is meant to be. Just look at the way her design has changed over the years, a reflection of the evolution of beauty standards for teenage girls. I get a sense that she is written according to the impossible standards set for this group, too- endlessly peppy, vaguely quirky, smart and yet considerate, goofy but never cringe, always undoubtedly femme and heterosexual. Still, I think this constant reinvention of the self might be a good starting point for understanding this character.

She’s 14. At 14, Coco doesn’t know who she is yet, but by escaping her life as a test subject in a lab, she has just been given a new outlet to try. She barely knows what a woman is, but she knows that she is one, and she has a budding, blossoming sense that she likes that fact. However, she has the same problem that the devs who created her did- too many men, not enough women. She needs a parent and a role model and neither Crash nor Aku Aku (nor Crunch, when he comes on the scene) are equipped to be one, so she kind of has to raise herself. It’s okay, she’s used to it. She raised herself in the lab after all. Coco falls headlong into her inventions and obsessions, things she knows it’s okay for her to like in this hellish 90′s media atmosphere- machines, computers, technology. She creates the- whatever that thing in Wrath of Cortex was, I don’t feel like looking it up- because she knows that it’s helpful, that it will impress her male relatives, which is important because she’s kind of young, and kind of needy, and kind of emotional, and kind of girly... and they never say anything to her about it, because truthfully they’re kind of scared of her, but Coco worries anyway that maybe if she just does the wrong thing once, they might leave her forever.

Tawna left her forever, after all. The only woman Coco ever could get close to, even though they were only really “close” for a few months and that was only really because Tawna was dating Coco’s older brother. But it was enough to show Coco what femininity was, what a beautiful woman was supposed to be, and it was enough to make her realize that she liked it. 

So she starts playing around with makeup. That’s why she has such wild eyeshadow in Crash 2 and 3. And Crash and Aku Aku can see it, but what are they going to do? Tell a girl how to be a girl? So they don’t say anything, and Coco’s free to try everything herself- she tries the kiddie look, she tries the trad look, she tries the sexy engineer with the crop top look (but not too sexy after all... she feels ashamed to act like that around her brother). And it feels really cool and freeing to do this, because she knows the other girls (you know, the ones on tv who go to school and have friends and crushes and) get yelled at all the time by their moms, and it’s cool that she doesn’t get policed on what to wear, but also it kind of doesn’t feel cool that no one seems to care. And she also kind of worries that they’re thinking about it but they won’t tell her for some reason, and she doesn’t know why they won’t care enough to tell her what they think of her. But whatever, she’s cool. She’s cool. She knows she’s cool. 

And Coco saw the way Crash leaned on Tawna like a crutch and she knows that Tawna didn’t like that and that was why she left but Coco still kind of feels a little bit like Tawna was being unreasonable, because picking up after Crash and talking for him and being there for him when he’s taking his lumps isn’t really so bad, and it’s actually kind of worth it, and it makes Coco feel good to be like a housewife and a mom, because Crash and Crunch and Aku Aku wouldn’t have anything like that otherwise, and they’re good people, and they deserve it. And Coco knows that Tawna left because she was tired of Crash and she was only really around because of Crash anyway but it still kind of a little bit feels like if Coco had been better- less annoying, less needy, less childish- then Tawna would have liked her enough to stay around. She knows it’s stupid but that’s what it feels like anyway. So Coco tries her hardest to be mature and feminine and cool and upbeat and helpful and kind and likable and unreplaceable because of that. Because Tawna never could. Because Coco was meant to replace her. Because Coco is better. 

#coco bandicoot #crash bandicoot #my art #traditional art #pencil art #sketches #furry art #woman #girl #sorry i take dumb game too seriously :( #it's my favorite hobby tho #essay

[perkeleen-lavellan]

There is a reason actually, beyond just my desire to avoid having to read books where I must assume the narrative wants me to sympathize with such stalwart pure characters as Celene Valmont, why I don’t read Dragon Age books or comics.

See, in an interactive story such as an RPG I as the reader have an unusually significant amount of control over the story, in the form of making my character make their own choices, their story being one I am in control of, and in the level of freedom I have to interpert the text, sometimes in the form of headcanon.

This means that even if the game writer’s own intention was to tell a story where, say, the Dalish desire to reclaim their past is deemed foolish, I as the reader have more flexibility to ignore that and tell a different story with a different message through the actions of my own character.

However in book and comic form this is a power I as a reader lose, and I don’t have faith in the narratives BioWare chooses to tell. So without that flexibility that lets me see a better story than its original intention, why would I waste my time reading a story I’m likely to dislike?

#also i think it’s poor writing to have to dump important information that makes the plot make sense and have depth #into books #and never including it in the game it relates to #so it’s also sheer pettiness #the comics I am far more willing to read because they’re far better about being their own standalone stories #that expand the world on their own merit #though the older ones have the other issue of sexist character design #which is also poor writing #it’s just poor visual writing in that case #god i hate yavana’s outfit even more than morrigan’s #it doesn’t look even mildly appealing where at least morrigan’s outfit still looks stylish #yavana just looks like the most generic unimaginative villaines from conan the barbarian or whatever #i HATE it #let the witches have FASHION #bioware critical #dragon age critical #look ma! jasko is bitching about dragon age again as if they haven’t been obsessing over that trash for 5 to six years #that’s right #who’s the fool #who’s the real idiot here #all i ever do on tumblr anymore is vent about dragon age #but it’s so good i just wanna take a nice hammer and beat that shit into perfection

[harmfulot]

Hi!! Before you read this or try to take this down please just consider reading this instead of being so hateful. I don’t mean to spread hate onto any shippers but I do believe that Inuyasha’s fandom has a major problem that needs to be addressed. Trigger warning for pedophila,child p*rn and grooming.

Why Sessrin is problematic.

Sessrin is a very popular ship among the Inuyasha community. If you are a shipper of this pair you won’t have to worry for lack of content for it. Rin is a injured child character that is introduced in the original Inuyasha manga in issue 14. She meets Sesshomaru in the forest and even though she is going through a lot at such a young age her kind self still tries to help him out. Sesshomaru at first does not care for this child who is tending to him. He tells her to mind her business and has her leave. Soon after Rin is killed by Kouga’s pack of wolves and Sesshomaru with his demon power scented her blood and comes to save her with his Tenseiga. After this Sessshomaru decides to take in Rin and protect her even though he had a hatred for humans. A “similarly” shippers like to compare Inuyasha and Kagome’s relationship with but their relationship is not written with romantic tensions..

The reason why Rin was written and VERY important in Inuyasha is because she is the reason why Sesshomaru became a better person. He no longer hated humans or wanted to go against his brother. This broken human child Rin looked up to Sesshomaru who was a powerful older demon. Sesshomaru grew a soft side and it was because of her caring innocence. You could easily see their connection as father and daughter or Sesshomaru as a guardian for her. Never did he have the thought of getting with her when she got older and Rin never developed a crush on him. Why? Because she is a child who lost her parents and now has this person who protects her like one. People may say that Jaken was the father figure for Rin but I don’t agree because unlike Sesshomaru he did not care for Rin and only handled her to please his lord. Jaken would call Rin many negative things and go off at her. Rin was annoyed by Jaken. He is certainly not a parent figure for her. Sesshomaru provided a stay aside him to lead for Rin which she followed. Rin was no longer alone. She had Sesshomaru’s company now. Even if he was not very good at taking care of her he never wanted her to get hurt or killed again. He is new to this “taking care of people” thing after all especially humans...young humans. Sessrin would destroy the growth of Sesshomaru because it can’t be denyed that their relationship represents this much more than a romance waiting to happen. When Kagura came along Rin told Jaken joyfully she bet Kagura had a crush on Sesshomaru this small moment reminds you she a is a child that lost her parents and could be seeing this as a opportunity for Kagura to become her adoptive mother. And most Sesshomaru cosplayers would use their daughter to cosplay for Rin. Usually making the picture taken seem like Sesshomaru is protecting Rin or having them both share a cute bonding moment. Why? Because that is how their relationship is meant to be established. For a Sessrin cosplay to work people would have to age up Rin and her design or else the cosplayers would receive negative feedback. Now moving on to how aging up Rin is not okay either.

People claim they only would like to see these two get together once Rin is older but that is almost as bad as shipping Sessrin while she is a child. Sesshomaru saw Rin grow up. He raised her for a while as his own this needs to stop being denied in the fandom. For Sesshomaru to impregnate Rin is out of character. And seems like a sick fanasty. He is not that kind of character. He wouldn’t touch Rin in that matter. Even if she was in her late 20’s. He respected child Rin and would still respect her older. Sessrin is like if a babysitter got together with the person they use to take care of as a kid. It’s disturbing!! Not cute. Rin does not deserve to be fedished.

It’s actually terrifying how much child p*rn there is of Rin. I feel so ashamed by even coming across one by mistake. Don’t use the excuse that Rin is a fictional character. Enough with that excuse. Let’s throw that excuse away. That excuse of “it’s fictional it does not matter..” only works for certain things like when someone assigns headcanons for their favorite character or ships a non-canon pair that isn’t problematic. Not when we are speaking of drawing nsfw of a fictional child. And fictional or not. Rin is a child and every grown person who has drawn smut of her should be ashamed and even arrested. If you see a fictional child in this matter what knows what could you lead you up to see an actual kid as this too. It’s a big problem because there are so many people who have gotten away with this. It’s so easy to find a image of child Rin without any of her clothes on or being r*ped by Sesshomaru. Sesshomaru would never r*pe anyone. It’s quite sad. Kagome was saved from being sexually assaulted by Mukostu because of Sesshomaru. People has even brought doujinshi comics of Sessrin making love or may I call it child p*rn in disguise? Be honest with yourself. It really is just that.

Everyone finding out would be horrified. Excluding Hanyo No Yashahime which majorly changed the characters. Sesshomaru and Rin being together would make everyone uncomfortable even Miroku who has before asked a child if she would bare his kid. Which Inuyasha,Kagome,and Sango reacted very badly to. And was yelled at for it. They do not tolerate pedos nor grooming. Kagome especially would be against. She referred Rin as the girl many times and puzzled together that Sesshomaru took care for Rin. Many people bring up that Kouga proposed to Ayame when she was a kid but remember that was never in the original. Sunrise created Ayame and added this other plot in order for Kouga to have someone at the end. Which is sad because this could have worked if Ayame met Kouga and gained a crush on him instead. She was a cute character after all. In the manga Kouga remains by himself since Kagome stayed with Inuyasha. Now I am definitely not a fan of Kouga and Ayame. I despise the fact Sunrise only created her to be Kouga’s romance interest but having him tell her he would marry her once she was older was even worse. This was a choice Sunrise made not Kouga’s original character. The reason why Kagome does not call out Kouga on this is because she did not know Ayame was a child at the time he proposed. He never mentioned it but if he did I’m certain Kagome would have not tried to keep setting them up together knowing this information. And just a reminder that even in real life some Inuyasha voice actors such as Richard Ian Cox and David Kaye voice actor for Sesshomaru does not support Sessrin. Adding on shipping Rin with Sesshomaru is like shipping Shippo with Inuyasha or Kagome. Weird right?? In the Manga Sesshomaru’s Mother Inukimi says that Sesshomaru is like his father in the strangest of ways after saving Rin again. No this doesn’t mean that he will soon come to love her romantically because Inukimi did add “In the strangest of ways” and refers to Rin as a girl like Kagome. She means that Sesshomaru had now changed and that he cared about someone who was a human like his dad who also cared for them even though they are both demons.

It’s funny how the sequel claims girl power but does not know how to treat it’s female characters. Kagome and Sango are both introduced as Inuyasha and Miroku’s wives instead of their actual character. Now if you not a woman please do not have a say in this unless you wish to agree but this is very sexist Sunrise. I’m not exaggerating how upsetting and disrespectful it is to see you introduce these strong main female role models like this. Inuyasha and Miroku were not titled as husbands of...so why were Kagome and Sango? I’m sure 99% of audience would know who is married to who. Women are not objects or tools Sunrise. Kagome is the main character of Inuyasha even if his name is on title. She is the reason why got to meet these characters. Sunrise has done female characters dirty many times like making Ayame obessed with Kouga when she could have been a neat character but what they did to Rin takes the cake. Rin is introduced as “The girl who adores Sesshomaru” but apparently now that girl is the mother of his children. Shame on you Sunrise!! We only saw Rin ever as a child even when series ended aging her up to become Sesshomaru’s wife without knowing how she is as a grown person is not a good example for your younger female audience to view. This could have been avoided.

Even though I’m a minor who only been in this fandom for half a year I gather a lot of knowledge of how far this fandom goes. It was definitely most popular around early 2000’s and many say it was their first anime with their first anime crush being Sesshomaru. Inuyasha was an anime I did not look content for till later after finishing season 2. When I discovered Sessrin I was real confused and thought to myself it was just a small part of the fandom but I could have been more wrong. Many accounts I followed that involved Inuyasha shipped Sessrin. Even after finishing many Inuyasha episodes I was very confused on why this was a thing and how could have it gotten so big. I thought something magical would have happened like Rin turning out to be someone much older but that never happened. I was wrong. This ship is just pedophila and nothing else. And I’m sure if Sesshomaru wasn’t “attractive” Sessrin wouldn’t be big. Going back to people crushing on Sesshomaru when they were younger I’m sure the reason Sessrin is not more discussed about for how toxic it is online is because besides people being scared,people like to insert themselves as Rin but this has to stop. Adults should not pair a child and grown up together even if the child is now grown. Especially grown ups with kids. This is not good example to set for your kids. I’ve seen many minors being harassed online for disliking Sessrin by adults. Which is super immature and should be in trouble for. Netruals must know that is not a ship war because there have been people who have gotten horrible hate and were told very graphic things by Sessrin shippers. ( By the way I’m sorry to anyone who has been hurt online even Sessrin shippers. I do not support Sessrin but no one should be told awful things. ) Many Inuyasha fans which dislike Sessrin have left Twitter and Tumblr because of how much hate they have gotten. This is not okay. People should be able to voice their opinion on something without being told to commit s*icide or hoping they get r*ped.

And your point? This sequel is being written in the 21th century. We could write it however we please not everything has to be “accurate” and also this state is just supporting the idea of children being wed with a grown up was okay before because the age of consent was different. Ugh..but this claim is just another excuse. Please stop using it. Many things in the past were allowed which wouldn’t be allowed today. So no this is not a valid reason to ship Rin with Sesshomaru.

Sunrise should not be off the hook for using child Rin clips for the opening as the daughters are shown. It was a wrong decision to make them seem like “moments” since now many actual pedophiles will support this pair as well. Even before this continuing was announced Sessrin was a big thing and “adult Rin” was not. Sunrise should not be supporting Sessrin at all. Nor anyone in the Inuyasha crew. They have many young fans watching and supporting this anime and they are being influenced and will grow up to think grooming is okay when it’s not. Again in 2021 this can not be allowed and it shouldn’t have ever. This sequel was not necessary. The anime ended fine.

If Rin is the mom I will no longer support Hanyo No Yashahime. I’m sorry but I will sadly have to drop it. There are a lot of reasons why Sessrin should not be a thing and Sunrise should know many themselves,because they have joined along these character’s journeys and seen through scripts who they are. And what Sessrin is pedophila and grooming that happened to get a lot of support which is why it is hard to find more people within online media discuss it. I sure do hope it does because I am tired of seeing only few doing it. We need more awareness of how problematic grooming pairs are in anime media. No more portraying children to grow up as romance interests for people they were raised by. Let’s keep Sesshomaru and Rin’s relationship wholesome. There is no need for them to get together. At the end of the day Rin owns Sesshomaru nothing and he knows that. Let’s start viewing them from a different point of view. Let’s see more fanart of them acting like father and daughter. I love that. Thank you and have a good day.

#Anti Sessrin #Inuyasha #Hanyo No Yashahime #Anti Grooming #Sunrise #I EDITED THIS SO MANY TIMES CAUSE OF ERRORS AND PEOPLE HAVE REBLOGGED IT THAT WAY YEE #Don’t encourage this

[codenamesazanka]

Hello, I hope you are well. For the unpopular opinion ask: Shouto Todoroki is not a well-written character. (But pls let's not fight!! I come in peace). Thank you and hope you have a great day.

Heya! And wow, starting off strong! 👌🏼

Hmm, I disagree - Shouto is a well-written character... Just sometimes underutilized, and unfortunately boring - to me. imo. He's just not my type of fav.

Shouto has a solid backstory, goes through tremendous character development, and forms one of the backbones of the story via the examination of his relationship with his father the Pro-Hero and conflict with his older brother Touya/Dabi. He's got goals, strengths and weaknesses and flaws, and he's got ongoing internal conflicts that merges well with his external conflicts. His interactions with his family and classmates gives plenty of meaty material, and he's also actively doing things that affect the plot.

Design wise, he's distinguishable, easily-identifiable, and cute. He's got super strong superpower(s) that allows him very versatile tactics or victory through pure strength and force. His appearance ties into his backstory, from the hair to the scar to the ice and fire, which is good visual storytelling.

That checks off a lot of the 'criteria' for well-written character! A checklist isn't the end all be all, of course, and so his character succeeds by becoming more than just that. He's a character to watch and take interest in - a reader must take interest in. Plenty of people find him a very interesting character and his circumstances compelling; they relate to him and his struggles, and it's fun to watch him turn from an aloof, angry student to a kind, helpful Hero of his own imagining.

He's a perfectly good character in the story of My Hero Academia. I personally just find him utterly boring.

I've been spoiled on his character-type 'processors': Gaara, the kid who was also born to be an ultimate weapon, isolated and trained, and suffers for it; and Zuko, the fire kid with a scar on his eye who also has major family drama. They were intense, they inspired in me much more emotions, I felt their choices had much bigger impact and repercussions and ripples that intrigued me; so comparatively, Shouto just didn't measure up.

Part of it is the writing around him - not the writing about him, but around him - the world and his role in it. Compared to Gaara - ninja-world equivalent of a Weapon of Mass Destruction and child of the leader of a major world power; and Zuko - Prince and Heir to the Main Villain Empire and trying to catch the one Hero that threatens their global conquest; Shouto is just any other good kid going to school, learning to be a Hero, not able to make major changes that really affects stuff. He can't, because he's 16-years-old in a modern-ish society that limits the power and responsibilities of children, and he's a good kid who isn't gonna jeopardize his chances of success. He does what he can, his interactions with the people around him are significant - though mostly on an individual level; and the Todoroki Family Saga has only started, so he always had potential to really change things - just not yet. He really makes sense for the character he's supposed to be, and that's a good thing! Just not my thing.

I guess you can say the fact that he hasn't gone rogue or really rock the boat is bad writing; but I think that's more of an opinion about what you want out of the story and character. For a lot of people in the fandom, his emotional and interpersonal journey fulfills their story satisfaction.

Which is why for what I want for the story, I think Shouto and his character and storyline shines best when he's interacting with his family - Endeavor, Rei, his siblings, Dabi. The Todoroki family conflict is connected closely into the worldbuilding, the themes of Heroism and responsibilities and atonement/redemption and conceptualization of power in the HeroAca world, and the overall story question of whether or not society will be destroyed. His decision to continue interacting with Endeavor, his thoughts and feelings on redemption/atonement, what he thinks he's obligated to do as son and brother, how that will affect what he thinks Heroism is - All that is real good. And the Todoroki family story is best when everyone plays a part (yes, even Endeavor) in a sort of ensemble cast, so it's not particularly Shouto that I'm interested in in this case either.

One can probably make the argument that the changes he goes through at school affects this, which is true; but I think Shouto could've had his epiphany with a total stranger or even off-screen and that wouldn't change how the rest of it plays out.

(God I hate that Sport Festival "Talk-No-Jutsu". I didn't get it and wasn't convinced back then, I still don't get it and am not convinced now. But that's also more with my issues with Deku.)

I'm very tepid on Shouto also because I love my angry, fucked-up kids, love my terrible, no-good-doing characters (Gaara straight up killed people, Zuko being the imperialist soldier he was). Shouto was angry and aloof at the beginning, but he was still an observably polite, good kid: no hurting other people, getting good grades, etc. He would've appealed to me more if he was burning and frostbiting kids left and right, if he was cruel and arrogant, if he was unpleasant and a bully. If what he did left big consequences, if some of his actions were unjustifiable, if his epiphany and 'change for the better' arc was much harder and tougher.

That would've made him a more polarizing character, but I would've been much more interested in how he'll develop in the long run and he affected the world around him.

(Ironically, that means I would've liked him if Shouto acted more like Touya/Dabi. Which seems paradoxical, except I do like Touya/Dabi - that is, canon!Touya/Dabi, the one who is fantasy racist and sexist and ageist, is sadistic and out to really hurt people. We need more of this Very Unpleasant Dabi. Not because I wanna hate him, but because that's also more interesting to me than the usual conceptualization of him as a tragic Loving Big Bro whose flaws can be completely blamed on Endeavor.

Basically: 'unforgivable' characters with big, unjustifiable actions and no excuses -> my great attention.)

Sorry this got super long! Thanks for Reading! And thank you very much for the ask! I hope you have a great day as well!!!!

#asked #answered #unpopular opinion asks #dualfuel #nalslastworkingbraincell #Todoroki Shouto #Todoroki Touya #Dabi #Drabby Dabi #send me unpopular opinions #start a fight with me

[theoriginoffire]

Second tierlist, for the boys! It was also posted to my main, but I’m going to expand on it here. You can find the girl one here. 

I either don’t like you too much or you’re forced as an ‘option’

I’M SORRY EVERYONE, I JUST DON’T LIKE LLOYD. I don’t even have a good reason. 

That said, I don’t really hate any of the dude characters. Calvin’s down here because I vaguely remember him being sexist, though it’s more interesting to me that a glitch stops you from marrying him in Tree of Tranquillity at all. Pete/Jack on the other hand is the only marriage option for the gameboy colour game, and I’m not to thrilled about that, but I don’t dislike him or anything.

No personal interest

Sorry fellas, you’re just not my type? After playing more of SoS I think I’d put Raeger higher since he’s kinda funny, but I wouldn’t date him. 

Unique?

A cut above ‘no personal interest’ because I have a bit more respect for ‘em. This varies, though, so I’ll run through:

Bob has a body type you don’t usually see in candidates. Angelo does art. Julian is rather feminine and I think that’s neat. Gustafa is weird but, like the other Forget-Me-Not candidates, he breaks the mould. Dan is...well he’s got a gambling problem but this negative aspect makes him stand out. Klaus is a modern older-bachelor type that actually looks older. His first event is strange, though. Skye was added so people would have eye candy for DS Cute and, while he annoys me, I still respect his inclusion and army of fangirls. Mikhail ... has a violin? Idk. His design intrigues me. I haven’t actually met him yet!

Mason is REALLY interesting, but he doesn’t have a face and ends the game so he’s pretty low. 

Harvest King is also a fantastic inclusion to AP in my opinion, but if I were putting in that much effort, I think I’d rather woo the Goddess. 

Oh You Know

A lot of these dudes are fandom-hated or mean in general. But I like them for that reason. I don’t think Brandon or Allen or Kappa are nice, but I LOVE poking fun at them, so I appreciate their existence as a result. This is essentially the ‘Would Date For the Lolz’ tier. 

I know Jamie is a lot higher on my ladies list, but consider that the extent of my divided opinion!

I like you but not THAT much

I suppose this is similar to the ‘friends’ tier on the ladies’ list. I’m not too interested in marrying them, but I’d be inclined to raise their friendship some.

I should marry them...

Fellas I’ve considered dating but it’d take time and effort that I don’t have. They weren’t top priority on my first playthrough. Lots of interesting routes, though!

Why did I marry them...?

A confusing tier to be in. I never got around to marrying Dirk, but I’ve married both Carter and Rod. Rod is really sweet and nice, I just... hate his clothes, and personality-wise I prefer a few of the other candidates. I’m really sorry Rod, you deserved better. 

Carter is, uh. The oldest man of oldest men, and deluded to boot. I mostly married him to get a specific child sprite. He has a really funny blushing face, though, and I’m going to use that to validate my decision. 

With Dirk, it’s simply a change in taste. He looks pretty young in Bazaar, and I was young when I was interested in him. But nowadays I’d rather marry ...

Ivan

... Ivan. He gets a special tier because I liked his name so much that I named my mascot OC after him. I’ve never really fancied him, per se, but I think he’s well dressed and is my top choice for GB. 

Married ‘em or was going to

My various husbands. I’m not as certain about Hiro anymore, but the last time I played ToTT I was pursuing him. Mistel has dropped a few tiers since I first made this, I’d rather date Elise. Like his sister, Mistel is written quite poorly, and he doesn’t even like birds! It’s hard for me to trust people that don’t like birds...

Ludus was my replacement for marrying Inari after finding out I can’t have kids, and...he’s pretty nice! I respect him and his hardworking nature. I’m not as crazy about him as I am about Doctor, though, who I’ve married a few times.

Soseki is ... unusual. I’ve come to love him, despite how much I hate his ‘ohh nooo I’m so old’ shtick. C’mon dude, you’re only pushing 30. He’s got a rather mysterious backstory and his trust issues are explored in his heart dialogue. I think he has a lot of potential, so I married him, and I still ship him with my MC, Duck!

WE HAVE HISTORY

My all-time favourites. 

Pierre is one I’m not super interested in anymore, his face is baby, but I hardcore crushed on him when I was 13, so I still have a lot of respect for his character. I like seeing Gourmet family lore, and he makes a lot of funny faces, as well as having a personality centring around the culinary arts. I like food.

Carl has a whole entire tragic backstory attached to him, but long story short, you can only play as a boy in the EU version of Magical Melody. I really wanted to marry him bad, but had to marry Kate instead. Nowadays I have means of playing the USA version and I was finally able to marry him. I think he’s great. A polite fellow with a big dream.

Gill is just really good, probably my top favourite. He comes off as cold and aloof, but as the son of the mayor he cares deeply about the town(s) he lives in, and in turn warms to the farmer because of their work ethic. He might be distant at first, but not in the same way that Vaughn and Neil are. I’m just a bit soft for his character type, that’s all.

#All Games #Ramblings

[marshmallowgoop]

On Ragyo Kiryuin

Please note: This post will contain discussions of sexual assault and abuse.

I am not good at talking about Ragyo Kiryuin.

Every time I do, I mess it up. I don’t emphasize her atrocities enough. I emphasize her atrocities too much. I cause trouble for myself and others, and I always end up feeling awful.

My recent writing on Ragyo’s character—found here and here—proved no different. The reception for the first post was so overwhelmingly negative that it spurred on my first-ever legitimate anon hate, and the second post only made things worse. Even now, my inbox is being filled with dismissive, rude, heartbreaking messages that bring me to tears, and though my therapist has told me not to say that I hate myself anymore, it’s difficult not to in situations like these. I hate that my wording was so poor and that I stated my opinion so badly that I incited all this rage and aggression in someone (or someones, a thought that scares me more than I would like to admit).

It may be a mistake to try to explain myself further. But I hurt people with what I said, and that bothers me. I hurt people because I struggle to explain my feelings on a cartoon character well, and I’m sorry. I’m embarrassed. I’m ashamed. I want to at least put in the effort to be kinder, more nuanced, and more sympathetic.

And maybe it’ll all blow up in my face. But I don’t want to not try.

So. Ragyo Kiryuin. Mother of Satsuki Kiryuin and Ryuko Matoi, CEO of REVOCS, and the ultimate Big Bad of Kill la Kill. Love her, hate her, or love her and hate her, she’s certainly made an impression in the anime-viewing world. And though I can’t speak for anyone else’s impression, my personal impression is... mixed.

Let’s go through this bit by bit.

A Good Villain?

Though I don’t see it much anymore, I remember lots of comparisons between Ragyo and the villains of Saturday morning cartoons back in the day. She was described as a generic, two-dimensional “evilz for the sake of evilz” baddie and criticized for her simplicity.

And though I did admittedly agree to an extent—I craved a lot more depth and insight, particularly in regards to her haunting line about “still having something of a human heart” whilst brutally attacking her own daughter in the final episode—I also found Ragyo to be a remarkably compelling, powerful, and horrifying villain even without tons of backstory and explanation. Perhaps my write-up on her first scene in episode 6 best details why; this woman has such a presence, and the visual language of the series amplifies that presence spectacularly. Ragyo’s intimidating and scary without the audience even needing to know anything about her.

And... I’d say that’s a good villain. That’s exactly what a villain should do.

Why Does This Matter, Goop?

I know, I know. My talking about Ragyo’s efficiency as a villain probably doesn’t seem all that relevant to the stuff that egged on an anon hate assault. But I think it’s important to mention that I do believe that Ragyo is a great, powerful villain. My previous posts were so bleak and cynical that I didn’t make this point clear. It does, in retrospect, seem as though I am crapping all over the character and subtly dissing anyone who enjoys her. I’m sorry for that, and I want to stress that that was not at all my intention.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with loving villains—even when they’re morally bankrupt, atrocious people like Ragyo—because loving villains, of course, doesn’t automatically mean that you excuse or endorse their actions. Villains like Ragyo also leave such a strong impression on the viewers, and personally, I’ve been so captivated by this awful woman that my first attempt at my years-in-the-making Kill la Kill fairytale AU featured about a 30,000-word backstory for her. There is a lot to respect, love, and love to hate when it comes to Ragyo and how she’s written, and I never, ever mean to discount that.

However, as with all things, it’s possible to love a piece of fiction or a character or what have you and also recognize that there are problems in the portrayal. And when it comes to Ragyo, as much as I think she’s a fantastic, engaging, terrifying villain, I do take issue with her depiction.

The Sexuality Point

I got a lot of heat for my ideas regarding Ragyo’s sexuality, and I admit: I didn’t express myself well. There was a lot more I should have said and elaborated upon. Maybe I’ll still fail spectacularly, but as I said before, I don’t want to not try.

So first, I want to take a moment to discuss intentionality. While I absolutely value Author is Dead and respect fan interpretations of any work, I also recognize that narrative decisions in fiction don’t happen in a vacuum. The fact of the matter is, Ragyo was originally designed as a father but was later changed to a mother so the relationships Ragyo shares with her daughters wouldn’t seem so “murky,” “gross,” and “perverted.”

And... that disturbs me. The idea, as I see it, is that a father abusing his daughters is, more than appropriately, disgusting, but a mother abusing her daughters is somehow less bad. In fact, writer Kazuki Nakashima outright states that he didn’t want to explore the “murkiness” of these relationships, noting that he “didn’t want to mix [that] ‘murkiness’ into the battle.” My impression—which I understand might very well be wrong—is that there’s the feeling that female-on-female abuse just isn’t as serious or life changing as male-on-female abuse. There’s the feeling that you can just not talk about how devastating this sexual assault is, and that’s totally okay, because the perpetrator is a woman.

I’ve written previously—and perhaps most overtly here—that female-on-female abuse seems to get brushed off way more than it should be. It’s cute when a girl grabs another girl’s boobs, even when that other girl is noticeably and visibly unhappy. It’s adorable when a girl forces a kiss on another girl. Charming. Sweet. If you have a problem with it, you’re a homophobe.

And I think that’s so, so damaging. I wish I had some statistics (oh anon hounding me about facts, if you’re here), but I recall reading about how this mindset—this idea that girls just can’t hurt other girls—ends up keeping wlw in abusive, toxic relationships. And that’s not even mentioning how the notion that women are harmless and can’t do damage is a totally sexist one that hurts men and other genders, too!

With Ragyo, I actually think there’s a lot of powerful potential. Kill la Kill could have shown that there’s nothing sweet or cute or charming or sexy about female-on-female abuse. It could have shown that a mother sexually abusing her daughters is just as horrific as a father sexually abusing his daughters. Both good representation and bad representation are important, and I do see the value in an evil, awful lesbian; as noted above, the idea that girls can’t hurt other girls, that wlw can’t be bad, and that only men can cause harm is a dangerous mindset to have. I think it’s important to address it, particularly in anime, which attracts younger viewers.

In the past, I argued that Kill la Kill did address it. I wrote, “These scenes [depicting Ragyo’s abuses] are full of what may be typically used as fanservice—female nudity, fondling, touching—but they’re all incredibly disturbing, uncomfortable, painful, and tragic. The series makes no joke about just how violating these instances are.” I’ve seen similar arguments made today. 

But personally, now knowing more about the creation of Ragyo and being aware of the gushy, “Wow, this is so hot!”-type comments concerning the notorious bath scene in the official Trigger Magazine, I’ve since changed my tune. I think it’s undeniable that there is some “this isn’t so bad and maybe actually kinda sexy” appeal to Ragyo’s abuses, and that’s very, very disappointing to me. 

Further, being a survivor, I also find it incredibly hurtful. I’ve been too traumatized to even date ever since what happened to me happened, and to see situations like what I went through depicted in such explicit, detailed, fanservice-y ways... it disturbs me.

I understand that my opinion isn’t going to be shared by everyone, but I’ve come to believe in a “less is more” approach when it comes to these hard, real situations. Implication arguably holds far more power. For example, in all of my college film classes, Osama left one of the strongest impressions. In it, a young girl dresses as a boy to provide for her family. She’s eventually found out when she has her first period, and she’s then married off to a much older man. The ending scene of the film depicts the man washing himself just as the girl, in disguise as a boy, had been taught to do after having sex. Unlike in Kill la Kill, you don’t see the unspeakable scene at all. You know exactly what happened with just that one shot, and that one shot has stuck with me ever since. That’s a powerful, respectful way of portraying these very real, very horrific problems.

I know I cannot speak for every survivor, but I personally disagree with the notion that fiction should not discuss these topics. In my mind, fiction absolutely should because these things are real, because they happen. There could have been so much power in Ragyo’s depiction, in Satsuki’s depiction, in Ryuko’s. But the severity of Ragyo’s abuses is brushed off, and, as I see it, fetishized. That’s what I take issue with—not that there’s a potential evil lesbian, not that there’s a depiction of a mother abusing her daughters, but how this is depicted: not respectfully.

Referring more to my troublesome posts, I also want to address my point of how girls showing affection for other girls is often portrayed negatively in Kill la Kill, which could potentially send the message, “Hey, lesbians just be evilz.” Perhaps more than anything else, this hurt my readers the most. I wasn’t very clear and didn’t speak well, and I apologize.

Maybe surprisingly, I’ve also taken issue with the argument that Ryuko kissing Nui shows that a girl having an attraction towards another girl is bad. As I saw it, the kiss was simply a shocking way of showing that Ryuko is not at all herself; someone kissing the person they hate the most says more than words ever could. The scene isn’t an attack on wlw; the protagonist and the villain in this case just so happen to both be girls.

And I still believe this rebuttal. But I also have mixed feelings, which explains my previous responses. I once more have to question intentionality: if Ryuko were a boy, as shonen heroes so often are, would this scene have happened? Would Nui have been so flirty with him? Would there have been so much screen time and detail put into the kiss? Similar to my arguments about Ragyo, could there have been a potentially much more powerful scene whose power comes from its implications, not what it actually shows?

In all my years in the Kill la Kill fandom, I’ve seen reactions to that scene that find it hot, as “proving” that Ryuko/Nui is the only canon Kill la Kill pairing, and that see it in ways that I find to be unsavory. If the goal of that kiss is to cement the fact that Ryuko isn’t herself in the most shocking way possible, I could argue that it failed for a lot of viewers. In fact, one of my more looked-at posts is about why Ryuko kisses Nui. Its execution is confusing, and yes, I do believe it could potentially send some bad messages about wlw, even if that wasn’t intended.

Which, to bring this discussion back towards Ragyo, I want to take a moment to say that bad messages can be totally unintentional. As a writer myself, I think about potential bad unintentional messages all the time. For instance, in my aforementioned fairytale AU, I had a theme going (’cause it’s a fairytale and all): a healthy, beautiful baby is good, a healthy, ugly baby is bad, and an unhealthy, beautiful baby is good. Notice how there’s only one ugly baby, and they’re bad? I realized that this could subtly say something about ugly people, and I’ve decided to make a point about a heroic character being ugly in order to send the message that anyone can be good or bad, regardless of if they’re beautiful or ugly, healthy or unhealthy.

With Ragyo (and with Nui as well), I don’t at all think the intention is to show that girls loving other girls is wrong and bad. But the depiction, to me, leaves things to be desired. A lot of it feels fetishy, and the fact that Ragyo was purposely changed to a woman for “gross” concerns also greatly irks me.

And before I try to write up a conclusion of sorts, I do want to offer this: what if Ragyo stayed a man, but he was associated with white and rainbows as Ragyo is in the final cut? It was stated at this year’s Anime Expo that director Hiroyuki Imaishi has his heroic characters in black and villainous characters in white, which could possibly send messages like Darkness Isn’t Bad and the real villains are the ones who are perverting the purity, goodness, and so on that are associated with white. In the same way, if Ragyo were a man who seemed straight but had rainbow hair, it could send the message that the real villain is the one perverting this symbol of love and acceptance.

I don’t know. Just some food for thought.

Conclusion

I am bad at talking about Ragyo. I am bad at talking about serious topics. I’m sure this post proves as much.

But I hope I’ve done a better job of explaining my point of view than I did before. But if I didn’t—which, knowing me, is likely—I just want everyone to know that I don’t think you’re a reprehensible person if you like Ragyo. I don’t think Ragyo is “too evil” to be representation. I don’t think she’s some terrible, awful character whom nobody can love. (At least, in regards to the writing. I hope there’s agreement that she’s a terrible, awful person.)

While I have problems with Ragyo’s depiction, I don’t think anyone is horrible and wrong if they don’t and resonate with it. I know I certainly like things that others find horrible and wrong, like the Ryuko/Senketsu pairing that I’ve been attacked left and right for, and I more than recognize and voice my own problems with it whilst still loving what I love (and politely disagreeing with the problems that others see that I don’t!)

I know I’m not good at this. But I hope I’ve conveyed my thoughts respectfully, and that, even if you strongly disagree, you know I welcome and am open to your thoughts and perspective, if you would like to share. That’s why I write these posts at all.

#kill la kill #ragyo kiryuin #analysis #ragyo discourse #ramblings #serious talk #the discourse #abuse mention #i'm sorry if this is awful i just got it confirmed that i do have adhd and hyper-focused on this even though i shouldn't have #and i haven't eaten all day 'cause i've been dying to finish this and i've spent several hours on it and... i'm trying #i'm sorry but i really really am trying

[whetstonefires]

Hey so random ask but, I see a lot of people calling Tim drake sexist, I personally don't think he is but what are your thoughts on that.

Oof. Okay.

Technically I can’t just say he’s not, because as the product of a sexist society he, like any other dude and to a lesser extent any person, has got some passive sexist attitudes baked in there.

It tends to surface in things like, when he went on that first big solo adventure when the Robin comic launched, that started in Paris? And he wound up hunting King Snake with Lady Shiva and this one rogue federal agent, a black man, and he got very decisive. Shiva says something cutting about white men, and she has a point, in that if either of his adult companions of the moment were also white men Tim would probably have been somewhat more conscious of the fact that he was thirteen.

That unconscious prioritization that DC’s sexist narrative tends to favor? That is sexism, and also racism, and it’s valuable to draw attention to it, though not, I feel, to blame it all on Tim because quite often he hasn’t actually done anything, the universe around him has just colluded to make him look good.

(Of course this doesn’t happen much anymore, but back when he was the Main Character it did. Comics is a sexist community in a sexist culture, so of course Tim got some of that muck on him.)

But most of the accusations you see going around are about tearing him down on Steph’s behalf, and that’s...murkier.

Because honestly Tim is less sexist than most of the men in his profession. Significantly less so than Bruce or Dick. I literally cannot imagine Tim talking about a loved one the way Dick used to talk about Kori, or a new acquaintance the way Dick did a lot of the one-episode women from his ‘90s Nightwing solo series. He wasn’t bad to them exactly, he was honestly very normal and probably above average, but the incredible, controlling arrogance and casual sexualization is still hard to get through, sometimes. Almost more so for how much more it comes out when he’s talking behind their backs. And Bruce...well, Bruce and gender is an entire deal I’m not going to try to unpack here.

And I cannot see Tim ever using ‘girl’ as an insult, the way Damian does.

Tim’s interactions with the ladies on Young Justice, for example, tended to be a lot less emphatically gendered than Dick’s interactions with the ladies of the Teen Titans, or even Bruce’s in the Justice League, though there are fewer women there and less casual interaction.

And to a considerable extent this was because the passage of ten years had modernized writing norms, and to a considerable extent this was because his demographic was younger than the Titans and therefore less sexualization was expected of the writers. Young Justice built on some stuff Marvel had been doing with young teams and broke some ground that Marvel has built on even further lately. (Seriously what is with Marvel’s young team books lately they’re incredible.) But there was also that Tim as an individual cares less about gender than most of his family.

(In some ways Jason may care even less, but he also leans really hard into performative masculinity and thought flirting was a reasonable way to interact with older women as a teenager, and he’s been being written by Scott Lobdell for ten years even if I have a hard time thinking of that as canon, so his data is mixed.)

Or take the case of this young freedom fighter (/terrorist) who happens to wear Robin colors, who Tim meets at one point in Europe. Dava. The story creates situations where Tim gets a weird mind-altering stimulant transferred orally to him by Dava, and then from him to Shiva when he’s giving her CPR, and Tim rather notably doesn’t have a single narration box or speech bubble that treats these as ‘kisses’ that he has somehow benefited from obtaining.

Later he crawl-drags Dava’s knocked-out-by-Shiva body out of the middle of the bloodbath Shiva is now staging, because he’s in no state to do anything to stop it, which he hates, and while this is certainly the comic arranging things to put Dava in a damsel status relative to Tim, Tim does not at any point frame it that way.

He is really good about not disrespecting Dava, honestly. It’s an interesting storyline partly for that reason, though it’s not the only time it comes up.

Tim was constantly meeting Troubled Young Women who could kick his ass and whom he respected considerably in most senses, but whom he was able to convince that their particular approach to violence was somehow flawed and needed to be re-thought. Thereby allowing there to be Strong Female Characters but keep the balance of the world in order and not worry the readership, by placing the male lead in a subtle power position even if he had gotten his ass kicked.

It was like. An entire genre. Tied to the way Shiva kept popping in as Incredibly Terrifying Supporting Cast.

This was a major way DC was using female characters in and immediately after the 90s and tbh in some ways it was more progressive than what they tend to do now, even as certain parts of the framing set my teeth on edge.

(Compare ‘Tim on drugs manages to hit Shiva hard enough to take her down because she didn’t expect lethal force from him so he has to do CPR’ to the more recent Red Robin story where we spend a couple of pages with him laying out to her face how she came to town to fulfill a contract on him but he brilliantly out-thought her and she ate the drugged chocolates he sent her so He Wins. Bleh.)

Steph stands out for hanging around instead of being a one-off appearance, and for not really rethinking her life in response to Tim much at all, while also not being a villain.

The crux of the issue is, Tim slid into talking down to Steph on a semi-regular basis, especially when trying to get her to stop vigilante-ing, which he’s getting backlash for some twenty-odd years later, mostly by people blaming him for her narrative deprioritization because it’s more satisfying than blaming DC.

And a major form this takes is declaring him generally sexist.

And the thing is, I’m sure his unconscious view of himself as more competent to make judgment calls because Main Character Demographic did play into the way he approached those conversations! I have never met a dude with any self-confidence whatsoever for whom that wasn’t a factor. Sexism, like racism, is the air we breathe, you have to actively extricate yourself from it and even then it will crop up at odd moments.

Classism played into it, too--especially once he knew she was a C-list villain’s daughter; there was that sense that often crops up in Batman properties that not only does greater access to resources make it safer and less self-destructive for the moneyed class to go vigilante-ing, noblesse oblige means it’s also somehow more just. The old ‘the outsider has a more objective approach’ canard. This was even more subtextual than the gender stuff, but I’m sure it was there.

Intellectual elitism is sort of a subset of both that and gender issues--Tim knows he’s smart, it’s the core of his pride, and Steph is not as smart in the same ways and has not had the same educational opportunites, and there are definitely moments of high-handedness tied to this.

And then there was the territorial aspect; it was official Bat policy to discourage all other Gotham vigilantes, usually in a much more absolute and commanding way than Tim ever tried, not to take them in and train them.

That might have been an option for Bruce if he’d wanted to, but it wasn’t really on the table for Tim unless he wanted to stage an intense campaign to totally disrupt his own life in order to bring this person who introduced herself by hitting him in the face with a brick after he mistook her for a villain into private Bat training and spaces. They’d known each other for a while and been having this argument in various forms most of that time, before they ever dated.

Please also remember that the last time Tim wanted to take a troubled blond under his and Bruce’s wings and show them the ropes and make sure they could do this safely as part of a personal healing process that would help everyone, that person took less than a week after starting to show signs of instability to have a complete psychotic break, beat him into the ground, build a brick wall in the Batcave to keep him out, lock down the computers, and start killing criminals with the knife-hands he added to the Batsuit, while failing to prioritize civilian safety.

This was not that long before Steph’s debut. If I were Tim I would not trust myself to sponsor further new team members either!

All of these things besides the Azrael trauma are directly from Bruce, who is often way more emphatic and more of an ass about them. Robin was mirroring Batman (consider the way he talks to Selina sometimes egad, sometimes it only doesn’t look awful because she’s playing along) and following Bat-policy; it is totally nonsensical to hold Tim accountable for this and not Bruce.

It’s also important to note that Tim wasn’t significantly less condescending to Anarky or the General, who were white guys around his age with roughly his class background whom he was trying to talk out of villainy, and honestly Lonnie’s motives were baller. (The original Anarky was a hacktivist based on a design somebody drew up for the third Robin, but Tim got made instead.) Tim’s entire character design back to his first appearance holds that when he’s trying to talk someone into something he tends to fall into a lecturing approach.

This can be very annoying! The first time he did it to Nightwing he got grabbed and shaken and snarled at. And of course it’s worse when he’s talking down a demographic slope, rather than up one.

I am very aware of how fucking annoying it is when guys do this, even if it is their normal mode of interaction. I have come very near to punching faces over it, when it’s really bad.

Tim doesn’t usually approach that line, but the problem is his writers didn’t seem to know the line was there, so if you’re reading some of his interactions with Steph from the perspective of having that chip on your shoulder already, especially if you’re not immersed in the narrative’s assumption that he is The Main Character, especially now that language norms have shifted slightly so wording that was considered neutral in the 90s is now obnoxious, it can ironically make a deeper impression than the much more blatant and decided sexism going on all around him.

So that’s my take on the situation. Tim has some mild passive gender prejudice which he has never taken enough notice of to seriously compensate for, made more visible by being in a deeply sexist world and by being kind of an annoying person sometimes, and this has been blown wildly out of proportion by people who feel that he and Steph are in competition to be The One Who Was Not An Asshole in that relationship.

This is not a winnable competition. They were both assholes sometimes, and even if you could prove Tim was a terrible boyfriend/person it wouldn’t validate all of Steph’s behavior--she was often forced to behave very badly or stupidly, because back then one of her major narrative functions was as a stick for the writers to hit Tim with.

And the thing is. If you’re going to exculpate Steph of awful behavior because it was ‘just’ the writers being sexist, let alone let Dick off the hook on similar grounds, I think it’s really unfair and messed up to then turn around and hold Tim-the-individual accountable for sexism that mostly wasn’t even situated in him so much as baked into the narrative, though to his benefit.

Like. When sexism (or other -ism) benefits people in real life it can be useful to draw their attention to their systemic advantages if they seem not to get it, but drawing Tim’s attention to his narrative prioritization would be extraordinarily meta (lol somebody write that fic). And in neither situation is it productive or fair (though I do know it is so so tempting) to treat the very existence of someone’s privilege as an offense they have personally committed.

They literally cannot help that. That’s how systemic works.

#tim drake #sexism #comics #robin #batfam #ask #i have spent a ridiculous amount of time on this ask yikes #posting as-is without further revision #hoc est meum #calypsosposts

[magnoliasandbeardedtooth]

Okay its been long enough, I think now I can admit to myself that I really don’t like HTTYD3, like, at all

Some minor things first. The whole “will we won’t we” about moving berk is annoying, and the villain is just a touch too maniacal. I like me a good nasty boy but he’s just a biiiit too “hehehe all according to keikaku,” “here are my brainwashed minions that are designed to look as evilas possible cause I’M evil, and are in no way shown to be the victims they actually are,” there was a lot of wasted potential with his entire deal.

Also!!!! Where was Valka the entire time??? She’s one of the coolest characters, and could have done so much in that movie and we get like 2 scenes???? And a dreadfully annoying gag where she’s being hounded by the most annoying supporting character?????? awful

Also also, I would have loved to see more of the hidden world, and been given a more substantial reason why Berk can’t move there. Perhaps it poses dangers human’s can’t deal with, or something

The biggest issue I have with the movie is the bonds between the characters, or rather, the lack thereof.

Toothless and Hiccup first. The entire movie, 98% of Toothless’s energy is spent thinking about the light fury. There is a solid 1 or 2 moments between Toothless and Hiccup that actually has them acting like close friends. And I can name them right off the top of my head, the 2 seconds they play fetch, and the epilogue. And even with fetch, Hiccup was the one being distant!!! Every other time, Toothless is ignoring Hiccup unless he’s helping with Girl. Even when Hiccup is plummeting to his death, Toothless hesitates, weighing the options of saving his best friend’s life to staying on Girl’s good side. Compare this to early in the second movie, where Hiccup is testing his glider, realizes he’s about to smash into a rock, and Toothless scrambles to get to him in time. Like????????????? Where did his character go

And not even just toothless, all the dragons seem suddenly very nonplussed about the bonds they have with the humans. At the end, the people are crying, but the dragons barely emote, and then they leave. The only possible reason I could think of for the dragons suddenly not giving a shit was to demonstrate how they were supposed to be wild animals????? But that’s stupid, cause it contradicts their behavior in the first two movies, and is never demonstrated in the third. They just, suddenly don’t care

Now, by super biggest issue, is Girl. Cause that’s basically all she is. Her only actual character trait is that she hates humans. That’s it.

I’ve never liked “suddenly love interest” stories, even when I was a kid. Even before I knew about heteronormativity and sexist character depictions, I literally never cared for those stores, and only disliked them more as I got older. So I was pretty disappointed when the entire plot of the last instalment of my favorite movie series is Girl.

I don’t even know why they like each other. Toothless takes one look at her and suddenly barely cares about the friendship that was the ENTIRE POINT of the first two movies. And even though every single interaction Girl and Toothless have together is one where they do nothing at best and she gets annoyed at worst, she keeps coming back??? Why does she keep coming back when they have ZERO bonding moments together????

I could imagine it’s because she doesn’t like how he’s been “tamed,” but they never show that!!!!!! Even one scene, where she’s horrified that he has human gear on him, and tries to tear it off, would solidify her motivation, but she doesn’t!!!!!! The first time they meet he’s COVERED in human and she doesn’t care at all?? They stare into each other’s eyes for a few seconds, and that is it. That’s all, there’s nothing else except being annoyed and running away.

ugh it could have been so much better. It could have been anything

#speaks #httyd

[bodhirook1138]

The Problems with Aladdin: Orientalism, Casting, and Ramadan

Originally posted on Medium.

Edward Said and Jack G. Shaheen did not do the work they did so that movies like Aladdin would still get made.

I say this as someone who has had a complicated relationship with the 1992 Aladdin animated feature. I loved it when I was a kid. For a long time, it was my favorite Disney cartoon. I remember proudly telling white friends and classmates in third grade that Aladdin was “about my people.” Although nothing is said in the movie about Aladdin’s religion, I read him as Muslim.

When I grew older, I read Jack G. Shaheen’s book, Reel Bad Arabs, which analyzes about 1,000 American films that vilify and stereotype Arabs and Muslims. Among these films is Aladdin, which Shaheen reportedly walked out of. Shaheen spoke out against lyrics in the film’s opening song: “I come from a land from a far-away place/Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face/It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.” Although he convinced Disney to remove the lyrics for the home video release, the final verse was still there: “It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.” As a 1993 op-ed in The New York Timeswrote, “It’s Racist, But Hey, It’s Disney.”

In Edward Said’s seminal book, Orientalism (1978), he described orientalism as a process in which the West constructs Eastern societies as exotic, backwards, and inferior. According to Said, orientalism’s otherization of Arabs, Muslims, and Islam provided justification for European colonialism and Western intervention in the Middle East and Muslim-majority countries, often under the pretext of rescuing the people — especially Muslim women — from themselves. In addition to orientalism’s practices of constructing the “Orient” as the West’s “Other,” Said asserted that another major facet of orientalism involves a “western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the ‘Orient.’” In other words, it is not the Arab or Muslim who gets to define themselves, but rather the West does.

There are plenty of excellent and detailed critiques out there about how the original Aladdin is filled with racist, sexist, and orientalist tropes, so there’s very little, if anything, to say that already hasn’t been said. In her extensive report, “Haqq and Hollywood: Illuminating 100 Years of Muslim Tropes And How to Transform Them,” Dr. Maytha Alhassen argues that Hollywood’s legacy of depicting Arabs and Muslims as offensive caricatures is continued in Aladdin, where the main characters like Aladdin and Jasmine are “whitewashed, with anglicized versions of Arabic names and Western European (though brown-skinned) facial features” and speak with white American accents. Alhassen notes the contrast with the “villains, Jafar, and the palace guards” who are depicted as “darker, swarthy, with undereye circles, hooked noses, black beards, and pronounced Arabic and British accents.” In another article, “The Problem with ‘Aladdin,’” Aditi Natasha Kini asserts that Aladdin is “a misogynist, xenophobic white fantasy,” in which Jasmine is sexualized and subjected to tropes of “white feminism as written by white dudes.” Not only does Jasmine have limited agency in the film, Kini writes, but her role in the film is “entirely dependent on the men around her.”

When Disney announced plans to produce a live-action remake of Aladdin, I learned through conversations that the Aladdin story is not even in the original text for Alf Layla wa Layla, or One Thousand and One Nights. It was later added by an 18th century French translator, Antoine Galland, who heard the story from a Syrian Maronite storyteller, Hanna Diyab. Galland did not even give credit to Diyab in his translation. Beyond the counter-argument that “the original Aladdin took place in China,” I am left wondering, how much of the original tale do we really know? How much did Galland change? It’s possible that Galland changed the story so significantly that everything we know about Aladdin is mostly a western, orientalist fabrication. For a more detailed account about the origins of the Aladdin tale, I recommend reading Arafat A. Razzaque’s article, “Who ‘wrote’ Aladdin? The Forgotten Syrian Storyteller.”

Disney has been boasting about how the live-action Aladdin is one of the “most diverse” movies in Hollywood, but this is an attempt to hide the fact that the casting of this film relied on racist logic: “All brown people are the same.” It’s great that an Egyptian-Canadian actor, Mena Massoud, was cast in the lead role, but there’s inconsistency elsewhere: Jasmine is played by British actress Naomi Scott, who is half Indian and half white; Jafar is played by Dutch-Tunisian actor Marwan Kenzari; and Jasmine’s father and a new character, Dalia, are played by Iranian-American actors Navid Negahban and Nasim Pedrad, respectively. The casting demonstrates that the filmmakers don’t know the differences between Arabs, Iranians, and South Asians. We are all conflated as “one and the same,” as usual.

Then there’s the casting of Will Smith as the genie. Whether deliberate or not, reinforced here is the Magical Negro trope. According to blogger Modern Hermeneut, this term was popularized by Spike Lee in 2011 and refers to “a spiritually attuned black character who is eager to help fulfill the destiny of a white protagonist.” Moreover, the author writes that Lee saw the Magical Negro as “a cleaned up version of the ‘happy slave’ stereotype, with black actors cast as simpleminded angels and saints.” Examples of the Magical Negro can be found in films like What Dreams May Come, City of Angels, Kazaam (which also features a Black genie), The Green Mile, The Adjustment Bureau, and The Legend of Bagger Vance. In the case of Aladdin, the genie’s purpose is to serve the protagonist’s dreams and ambitions. While Aladdin is Arab, not white, the racial dynamic is still problematic as the Magical Negro trope can be perpetuated by non-Black people of color as well.

I need to pause for a moment to explain that I don’t believe an Aladdin movie should only consist of Arab actors. Yes, Agrabah is a fictional Arab country, but it would be perfectly fine to have non-Arabs like Iranians, South Asians, and Africans in the movie as well. That’s not the issue I have with the casting, and this is not about identity politics. My problem is that the filmmakers saw Middle Eastern and South Asian people as interchangeable rather than setting out to explore complex racial, ethnic, and power dynamics that would arise from having ethnically diverse characters existing within an Arab-majority society. Evelyn Alsultany, an Associate Professor who was consulted for the film, states in her post that one of the ways Disney tried to justify casting a non-Arab actress for Jasmine was by mentioning that her mother was born “in another land.” However, this seems to have been Disney doing damage control after they received some backlash about Jasmine’s casting. The result is convenient erasure of an Arab woman character. Moreover, the change in Jasmine’s ethnicity does little, if anything, to reduce the film’s problematic amalgamation of Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures. Alsultany writes that “audiences today will be as hard pressed as those in 1992 — or 1922, for that matter — to identify any distinct Middle Eastern cultures beyond that of an overgeneralized ‘East,’” where “belly dancing and Bollywood dancing, turbans and keffiyehs, Iranian and Arab accents all appear in the film interchangeably.”

Other examples of how the film conflates various Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures is highlighted in Roxana Hadadi’s review: “Terms like ‘Sultan’ and ‘Vizier’ can be traced to the Ottoman Empire, but the movie also uses the term ‘Shah,’ which is Iranian monarchy.” Referring to the dance scenes and clothing, she writes they are “mostly influenced by Indian designs and Bollywood styles” while “the military armor looks like leftovers from Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven.” An intersectional approach to the diverse ethnic communities represented in the film would have made for a more nuanced narrative, but this would have required a better director.

Speaking of the director, it is amazing that, of all people, Disney hired Guy Ritchie. Because if there is any director out there who understands the importance of representation and knows how to author a nuanced narrative about Middle Eastern characters living in a fictitious Arab country, it’s… Guy Ritchie? Despite all of the issues regarding the origin of the Aladdin story, I still believed the narrative could have been reclaimed in a really empowering way, but that could not happen with someone like Guy Ritchie. It’s textbook orientalism to have a white man control the narrative. I would have preferred socially and politically conscious Middle Eastern and Muslim writers/directors to make this narrative their own. Instead, we are left with an orientalist fantasy that looks like an exoticized fusion of how a white man perceives South Asia and the Middle East.

Lastly, I have to comment on how this movie was released during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. In fact, the film’s release date, May 24th, was just one day before the last ten days of Ramadan, which are considered to be the most important in the month. During Ramadan, Muslims around the world fast — if they are able to — from dawn to sunset every day for 30 days. The time when we break our fast, iftar, typically involves dinner and prayer with family, friends, and/or the community. But Ramadan is more than just about fasting, it’s a time of self-reflection, compassion, and strengthening our connection with Allah, our loved ones, and community. I don’t believe Disney released Aladdin during Ramadan intentionally. If anything, I think the film’s release date is reflective of how clueless and ignorant Disney is. It’s so ridiculous that it’s laughable.

I don’t want to give the impression that Muslims don’t go out to the movies during Ramadan. Of course there are Muslims who do. I just know a lot who don’t— some for religious reasons and some, like myself, for no other reason than simply not having enough time between iftar and the pre-dawn meal, sehri (I mean, I could go during the day, but who wants to watch a movie hungry, right?). Even Islamophobic Bollywood knows to release blockbuster movies on Eid, not towards the end of Ramadan.

But this isn’t about judging Muslim religiosity during the holy month. No one is “less” of a Muslim if they are going to the movie theater or anywhere else on Ramadan. My point is that Disney has not shown any consideration for the Muslim community with this movie. They did not even consider how releasing the film during Ramadan would isolate some of the Muslim audience. It’s clear that Disney did not make efforts to engage the Muslim community. Of course, there is nothing surprising about this. But you cannot brag about diversity when you’re not even engaging a group of people that represents the majority of the population you claim to be celebrating! In response to Shaheen’s critiques of the original Aladdin cartoon, a Disney distribution president at the time said Aladdin is “not just for Arabs, but for everybody.” But this is a typical dismissive tactic used to gloss over the real issues. No doubt Disney will follow the same script when people criticize the latest film.

I don’t have any interest in this movie because it failed to learn anything from the criticism it received back in 1992. The fact that a 1993 op-ed piece titled, “It’s Racist, But Hey, It’s Disney” is still relevant to the live-action version of a film that came out 27 years ago is both upsetting and sad at the same time. As I said earlier, Edward Said and Jack Shaheen did not exhaustively speak out against orientalism, exoticism, and vilification to only see them reproduced over and over again. Of course Disney refused to educate themselves and listen to people like Shaheen— their Aladdin story was never meant for us.

#Aladdin #aladdin remake #Orientalism #Disney #Muslim

[naylar-draws]

She Giggled: Meta-textual Shit About That Time Merlin Flirted With an Underage Girl

So anyways, y’all know that scene? The one people really hate where Merlin flirts with Claire? When I first saw that scene, it made me really uncomfortable, and I had a hard time pinning down why. So I was thinking about that instead of sleeping and now I’m writing this instead of sleeping.

Disclaimer: This isn’t Merlin hate discourse or some shit. I know there’s been discourse about the hate train and this whole rant/analysis has nothing to do with it. I do my best to stay out of fandom discourse and I ain’t gonna ruin my streak because of a crusty old animated dude. If you’re looking for hate, it ain’t here. If you’re looking for analysis on a particular scene in the context of Trollhunters being a fictional text created by real people, then welcome friend. I also know this is an art blog, but I have other hobbies too dammit.

Anywho here’s my humble opinion/analysis on the scene and why it failed: (roughly 1300 word rant/analysis under the cut)

Objectively, it’s gross: an old man flirting with an underaged girl, referring to her as a “lovely creature”, touching her in a non-platonic way etc. these are behaviors that, in real life, shouldn’t be acceptable. These are behaviors that I can say from personal experience are not pleasant to be on the receiving end of. These are also behaviors that women experience regularly and are often told that they have to put up with. Stay with me I’m going more in depth.

So why is the scene within the show unbearable? I’d say because of the in-text reaction to it. (Now I don’t have Netflix this month so I’m going from memory and can’t pull up screenshots bear with me) The response that draws the most attention is Claire’s giggle. She giggles in response. She appears shy at first, Merlin walks up to her and gently lifts her chin, and her response is positive.

Now, one could assume that she was laughing out of nervousness. I could relate to that. The times when I was underage and being hit on by significantly older men, my first reaction was to giggle or chuckle politely, do nothing to upset them, and then extricate myself from the situation however I could. However that’s irl and my being uncomfortable existed with or without any external observation. Trollhunters is a fictional text whose job is to communicate everything it wants to to the viewer. Anything it does not communicate does not tangentially exist. That means that if the creative team indeed intended to have Claire’s giggle be one of discomfort, it would be their job to communicate it to the viewer via cinematography, her body language, dialogue, or an extra scene where she discloses her feelings on Merlin’s actions, that she did feel uncomfortable. All it would take would be a nervous side glance and a brief close-up shot of her face or something of the like. However, the scene only displays her reaction as a surface level giggle, which portrays a positive reaction.

The other reactions in the scene are Jim, Toby, Aaarrrgghh, and Blinky’s. The issue here is that they don’t react. None of the characters bat their eyes at this. Now there’s that screenshot that I’ve seen going around where Blinky is looking at Merlin with indignation while the wizard is ugh caressing her chin. The point being made, partially in jest, is that Blinky’s angry about it just like the viewer. But that screenshot is actually slightly out of context. During that part, Blinky was reacting to something Merlin had said that was entirely unrelated to the inappropriate behavior. Someone could say that maybe the Trolls don’t know about such human customs and that’s why they didn’t bat an eye, and Toby and Jim are uncomfortable but don’t feel like they’re able to speak up or some manner of such. But, again, nothing in the text shows or says this. Again, all it would take would be a shot of a nervous glance. If you assume that one of the characters did indeed feel discomfort, then feel free to assume it, idc. But at that point it’s a headcanon. And headcanons, while they can make canon more fun, are by no means a way of dismissing canon of the roles it failed to fulfill, or absolving it of issues with its content.

Okay, but maybe someone would say that you don’t need characters to tell the viewer what’s right or wrong. Obviously, the scene was meant to show Merlin as the unsavory sort and somehow also comment on society’s intentional obliviousness to the lighter forms of sexual harassment. To which I would respond by saying that if that were the case, then the creative team would have to communicate that message if not by the characters, then by the cinematography. For instance, a change in shot composition, lighting, camera movement, or by the sound design or the background music. To which that scene has none of that. It is something that happens and then is immediately forgotten about, no significance whatsoever is added to the part where Merlin flirts with an underage girl in the context of the episode or overall show.

If the creative team intended to comment on Merlin’s specific actions of flirting with Claire, then they failed, and it did not make it into the finished product.

People might also say that it’s fine because Merlin, a fictional character created by a group of people, is from the middle ages, and during that time Claire would have been considered an adult. This is an argument I have multiple problems with that I will not get into, but first of all, the show does not communicate this. If they really wanted to address the social changes Merlin has to adapt to, the creative team would have had Toby and Jim onscreen explain to Merlin that 18 is now the age of adulthood, slavery is no longer okay, and equal rights are a thing. Also on a storytelling level, they would need a way to juxtapose Merlin’s way of thinking with another character’s or by cinematography to show that the characters who grew up in modern times don’t think underage flirting is okay like he does. Which I’ve already established did not happen.

So at the end of the day, what does Trollhunters have to say about Merlin, an old man, flirting with an underage girl and, urk, gently lifting her chin like a goddamned creep if in its text all it has is non-reactions, no commentary, and a single positive reaction? Well, perhaps not an endorsement of, but most certainly an unintentional normalization of such an action.

And you know what, who cares? Right? Its just a random kids show. Why did I write all this down? Well, partially because I’m a film buff who over-analyzes fictional texts on my free time. But also because this is just a minor example of how fiction reflects even the less than savory aspects of our society. The creative team of Trollhunters probably didn’t see an issue with Merlin flirting with an underage girl, or if they did, it wasn’t a large enough one that is was removed from the finished product. And also, because this is a very good example of the greater issues of the show. Specifically why Merlin breeds so much hate: because the text of the show does not do enough to comment on his moral ambiguity (he is framed as a morally gray good guy who “looks at the bigger picture”, but not all of his eh, less than savory actions are addressed and it leaves viewer feeling as though some of those behaviors are then seen as normal which can leave a really icky feeling [see the Philadelphia Story to get more of those nasty feelings]). Also the fact that while the show is not overtly sexist, it is most definitely filtered through a, eh hum, slightly uninformed male gaze. Only uninformed males (and maybe some females with internalized sexism) would assume that an underage girl would have a positive reaction to an old man calling her a “lovely creature” and gently lifting her chin and leaning over her so the old man is effectively looming over her and ugh why did it have to be like that. (If people are interested I’ll do an analysis on Trollhunters and gender ‘cause boy do I have things to say about gender and sexual dimorphism in this show)

PS to anyone who says that the creators are just waiting to address these issues in Wizards, no film maker worth their salt would intentionally do that, what the heck? who wants to deliberately make a children’s show and add an underage flirting scene and then just leave it unaddressed for years like jesus mcfeezus I would worry about more than their capabilities as a showrunner

#Trollhunters #tales of arcadia #analysis #trollhunter analysis #claire nunez #merlin #essay #words? on my art blog?? #I actually really like this show #like i know i just spent too many words criticizing it bu that's love baby #ask me why strickler should have died (like from a storytelling standpoint) #so yeah in depth analysis is just like a thing i do

[they-did-what-to-allura]

My letter for the @justice-for-allura project. Posting mostly to remind anybody who might be lurking that this is a thing, and it’s a cool thing. If you feel bad bout how Allura’s story went down and wanna make your points known, this is a great opportunity for it.

Edit: Changed some things, fixed a couple typos and reworded some points for clarification.

To the Voltron Team, DreamWorks, to Any and All Involved with the Decision to Kill Off Allura,

Let me begin by thanking the team for giving us this iteration of Allura to begin with. She is a beloved character to many fans. If she wasn’t such a great character, there wouldn’t be so many of us upset about the way her story ended. So, thank you for Allura. She was an amazing character with interesting layers of personality and a delightful design.

In this letter I will explain not only why I was personally disheartened by her death, but also why I believe it was a poor choice to make in terms of writing and the larger narrative.

On the personal end, I related very much to Allura. I empathize with the trauma of losing loved ones and it was cathartic for me to see a character lose so much, but not be defined by that loss. A character who retained a multifaceted personality that included a playful streak, a love of sparkly things, a sense of justice, and abundant courage. She is not reduced to her loss even though it impacts her journey as a character.

Allura’s struggle with Alfor’s corrupted AI also deeply resonated with me. While this is coming from a rather abstract point, it reminds me of my own struggle with a father who is an addict. Allura had to let Alfor’s AI go in spite of how painful it was, in spite of the better memories haunting her every step of the way. The possibility I will have to let my own father go is a very real one because he has made it clear he will never change. His addiction has effectively corrupted our relationship and fed into my own stints with substance abuse. This will be an unspeakably painful decision for me and we have many happier memories that reel through my mind every moment I even contemplate making it.

To relate to a character, to be inspired by a character and her persistence, and then watch her die…really blows. My stomach sank. I felt like crap. I felt even crappier upon hearing that my friend’s nine year old niece sobbed when she watched the ending. I doubt we related to Allura for the same reasons, but I do know that Allura was her favorite character. So with that, I’ll get into the less personal and more objective reasons as to why I feel Allura’s death was a horrible decision.

Firstly, VLD is geared toward younger audiences. I know VLD has a notable periphery demographic, with many older teens and adults such as myself watching and being in the fandom. I know sometimes this periphery demographic can be louder than the intended audience, which I can only assume is children due to the toys and easy-read supplemental materials. VLD has a Y-7 rating, so even if the volume of the periphery demographic drowns out that of the intended, the rating alone demonstrates that this is a show that’s at the least meant to be accessible to children.

Children are impressionable. Representation is important for people of all ages, of course, but it is especially important to children. Kids connect more easily to media where they can see themselves and for the good or the ill, fictional characters can be role models for children.

Allura was a non-white female leader, described in-universe as the “Heart of Voltron.” That’s amazing! That’s truly rare. It’s sad that it’s rare. It’s 2019 and there should be a plethora of non-white female protagonists for young girls of color to look up to. But there aren’t.

Allura was fantastic representation for young girls of color. Representation they hardly ever get. I cannot see a single good reason to take that representation away from them. In fact, it seems downright mean to take that away from them. I do not want the excuse that the staff weren’t aware of the importance of representation, either. You can’t promote the show with official art like this:

  …and claim you’re unaware of how important representation is. Particularly for children, for whom this show was rated as being appropriate for.

I do not feel the excuse that this show was about war is reasonable either. Yes, in real life, war is painful. Lives are lost indiscriminately. This was one of the justifications cited for Adam’s death when VLD was criticized for portraying the “Bury Your Gays” trope. However, VLD had already made it clear that war had costs. The Arusian village was destroyed purposely to bait the team. Several Blades of Marmora lost their lives aiding the team. The costs of war were very clear early on in the show. Allura certainly didn’t have to die to reinforce a theme that had already been reinforced several times prior.

On that note, it is very telling that an apology letter was sent for the death of a character who had all of two minutes of screen time, but not for Allura, a major protagonist.

Many people are offended by Allura’s death, feeling that it is racist and sexist. I do not want to believe that Allura’s death was intended to be either of these things. However, there are serious unfortunate implications in killing off your only WoC in the main cast that cannot be ignored. VLD is fictional but it exists in a real world, where real people are impacted by these issues.

While Allura’s death ultimately feels disrespectful given what she represented and its sheer pointlessness in the story, I see attempts at respect in its overall framing. Allura is revered as a hero. There is a statue built in her honor. She has a legacy. These are things that generally shape the celebration of a fallen hero. But even within the framing, there are mixed signals. Most notably, her loved ones take cheery selfies in font of her monument. In my personal opinion, that is the antithesis to an attempted respectful tone.

And I specifically use the word ‘attempted’ because despite the framing, Allura’s death does not actually come across as respectful in the least. It is crammed into the last nine minutes of the final episode. It is immediately followed by a flash forward to the future. Neither the characters nor the audience have time to mourn her. I do not want to hear the excuse that Allura’s death isn’t offensive because “she died as a hero.” Simply because something may be framed to be respectful doesn’t mean it actually is. The poor execution of that attempted framing itself is one of the lesser of many harmful messages sent by the decision to kill Allura off.

In a world where representation is important, an importance that is acknowledged by the staff, somehow someone still came to the conclusion that Allura’s narrative should end in death. Intent aside, her death falls into the “Disposable Woman” cliche, and is especially gutting because she is a WoC. I cannot reiterate how rare it is to see characters like Allura, non-white women that serve as major protagonists.

Allura suffered unduly throughout the series. She lost an entire planet, her family, her home, her title, and eventually her life. She was always a giving character. She was willing to sacrifice herself to save the Balmera as early as season one. It is noble of her to have that kind of dedication, I’m not saying it isn’t. But girls are socialized to sacrifice their happiness for others, it is a message they internalize at multiple levels.

Girls are socialized to put others before themselves and to sacrifice, and this expectation is especially pressing for girls of color. The SBW (Strong Black Woman) stereotype is a notably prevalent one because of the expectation placed on black women specifically to always be strong and constantly put their own needs last. While Allura is an alien, she is in-universe a minority post Altea’s destruction and IRL, redesigned to be non-white. And many fans, including myself, do see her as specifically black-coded because of her skin tone, hair texture, and having Kimberly Brooks as her voice actress.

A hopeful ending for any character who sacrificed as much as Allura would be one where that character is rewarded for their sacrifice. Where they’re able to find happiness on the other end. Where the audience feels payoff because a character we’ve seen give for so long finally gets. Where the audience feels fulfilled because a character we’ve seen grieve and grieve finally gets to breathe. For kids to see a non-white female character get this kind of ending isn’t only hopeful, but important. Girls— especially girls of color —should be shown that they don’t have to give up everything. Boys should also be shown these narratives, because they shouldn’t internalize the expectation of the girls and women in their lives to constantly sacrifice.

Allura’s sacrifice stands out as particularly glaring when we take into account that teamwork was supposedly one of VLD’s major themes. In a show entitled Voltron: Legendary Defender, wherein the titular robot must be formed by a team, it seems very out of place that it was up to one person to save the day. What was the point of the team bonding with each other, and with the lions, if all of that was going to be rendered useless in the battle that mattered the most?

None of the main characters we’d been led to believe loved each other made any real attempt to find another solution through teamwork. They more or less accepted Allura’s sacrifice at face value even though she was supposedly important to them. The paladins offered some minimal protest, then each gave Allura a hug and just watched her walk to her death. In addition to undercutting the theme of teamwork in the show, it just felt very strange to watch. I didn’t feel like I was watching a team who fought side-by-side at all. These characters felt less connected to each other than they did during the first season and at this point, supposedly they’ve fought side-by-side for years.

Not only did Allura’s lone sacrifice seem to undercut the theme of teamwork, but it just seemed incongruent to the atmosphere of the series. While loss was depicted and prevalent in VLD, nothing ever indicated that it would be a tragedy. Watching Allura’s death play out feels like watching a show that forgot what genre it was supposed to be. The emotional beats aren’t the right ones.

We feel no payoff from her death because it didn’t accomplish anything of value in the narrative. Allura had something to live for after the war, her newfound family and love interest. She didn’t have anything to atone for, unlike Honerva. At best (and I really mean at best here) one could argue that her death contributed to Lance’s development because he spends his life spreading her message after the fact. However, many viewers understandably perceived this as a demotion for Lance with its own set of unfortunate implications. Even if that was the case— which itself feels like grasping at straws for some kind of explanation —I shouldn’t have to point out why it’s extremely problematic for a female character to be killed for her love interest’s development.

Allura’s death felt as pointless as it did out of place. It felt unsatisfying and frankly, just like someone in the writer’s room wanted to be Edgy™ for the sake of it. It also felt particularly mean coming from a team who acknowledged how important representation was to its viewers and who used representation as a promotion point.

VLD is over. That is clear. I do not write this with the intent to get the “real ending” or anything of the like. I write this to express why Allura’s death effected me personally, why I feel it has harmful messages, and why it comes across both as harsh and as poor writing.

I hope all those who were involved with this decision reflect on the feedback from the way her death was perceived, most important the feedback of the WoC in the audience. Major character death should always be handled with care, especially in children’s programs. Representation should always be handled with care, especially in children’s programs. The way Allura’s story ultimately ended feels careless at best and malicious at worst.

Signed,

An Incredibly Disappointed Viewer

#justiceforallura #voltron critical #representation #allura #justice for allura

[scrambledgegs]

Dead Kids

     Filipino indie film, Dead Kids is more than your stereotypical coming-of-aged type of movie. The film centralizes around a group of middle to upper class, private high school students who conspire together and hatch an amateur plan to kidnap the resident school bully. By kidnapping him and holding him for ransom for Php 30 Million, they will be able to kill two birds with one stone – get even and teach their tormentor a lasting lesson, and secondly, get their hands on a hefty sum of money for personal reasons.

  In this respect, only one of the kidnappers seemed to have “the most valid reason” because unlike the other students in the private school, he is the only scholar and in “real” need of money to pay for college and other basic necessities. In fact, he resorts to various “rackets” just to keep financially afloat. He is constantly marginalized and unaccepted by his peers at school. This aspect of the movie also highlights social divides that plagues the Philippines as well, and is exacerbated by growing issues of entitlement among the wealthy and privileged.

As the movie unfolds, as expected, the group collectively bungle the kidnapping operations; they destroy families, dreams and lives. The movie is both comedic and tragic – which is why it really resonated with me. It is very real.

    What struck me the most was the formulation and execution of the whole plan – the scenes and dialogue hit close to home. I recalled my younger school-kid self, as well as my peers back in the day. We conversed very similarly, in a mix of Tagalog and English and used slang words. We also had the same, typical encompassing adolescent problems, the usual things like – school, grades, barkada, relationships, peer pressure, gimikan and yes, vices.

     The dark and stark difference however is that these kids are beyond your average group; they are quite scary. They are made of different stuff – they are very much alive, but at a young age, already seem dead inside, devoid of morals and values. To even think about kidnapping a classmate is one thing, but to actually have the resolve to execute the plan is really frightening. At one point, you will feel sorry for the kidnapped bully, despite what he has done to them individually in the past scenes. Adults are also hardly present in the movie. It is as though these kids live in a warped world with no authority and supervision. Mind you, this movie is based on actual events that transpired in 2018 among university students in Manila. The movie will really make you think about then and now, and the factors which are pushing our youth over the edge.

The Age of the Internet of things: Anxiety, Depression, Violence and Envy

    Dead Kids touched on many prevailing themes faced by our generation today – specifically by Millennials and now the Generation Z (Gen Z). Over and over again in the movie, social media was shown to play a disastrous effect on the psyche of these kids, mirroring what is happening in real life today. At a click of a button and swipe of fingertips, everyone knows what everyone else is doing because of social media, and that makes people compare themselves to others. This continuous, 24/7 exposure breeds anxiety, depression and envy – especially for young people who are unable to compartmentalize or differentiate social media lives from reality. Affected young people feel like they are just not good enough, as compared with for example: a classmate who has topped the class with the highest grades, or their athletic friend who has won a championship title, or another colleague who possesses the latest designer clothes, or an affluent friend who recently took a trip to Europe over summer vacation. They want to achieve or get their hands on the same things as quickly as they could, so that they too can post and boast about it online. Social media encourages instant gratification, and many of our young people forget the value of hard work and replace it with what they will call “passion” – in the form of unsteady and capricious whims. As a business professor of mine said, this generation is concerned “with reaching only the summit, but forget about the climb.” This could not be any truer.

Cyber-Bullying and Disconnection

    Let us also not forget the issue of cyber-bullying. As shown in Dead Kids, one of the kidnappers recalls how the resident bully is able to bully him in all mediums – physically in school, as well as online, in front of everyone, and get away with it. Those on the posting-end, who receive numerous likes, views and comments, feel as though their online taunts are encouraged and justified, and those as the object of cyber-bullying, feel as though they deserve this treatment. What makes it even worse is that nobody is really held accountable. You can easily see how this can make one spiral downwards in self-loathing and anger. It does not come as a surprise that the recent literature today speaks of significantly increasing rates of depression, aggression, anxiety – and even suicide among the youth. Another matter hand-in-hand with this are issues on personal connections, or the lack thereof. Why does it seem that young people today feel like they have no safe space or outlet to talk about what they are really going through? We have heard this before: that the more we are connected through the cyber world and technology, the more we have become disconnected in our actual and personal relationships.

Narcissism and Materialism

    There was also a memorable scene in Dead Kids during the drop-off of the ransom money at the agreed location. (The location happens to be real-life bar called 2020, in Pasong Tamo where I have been to a couple of time before, and coincidentally today is 02.20.2020). The ransom money is put together by the victim’s father, an alleged drug lord, and he places the money in a designer bag. The moment the bag is plopped in the center of the dance floor, amidst the blazing trap music and flashing neon lights, many girls race for it, not knowing its contents. The scene was done really well, and you just think to yourself, “Wow, have we really become this materialistic and shallow, that we would physically fight over a designer bag?” In turn, the raucous compromises the whole operation, and one of the girls is held at gunpoint.

The Death of a Nation

    I would go so far to say that I believe there is a breakdown of values in the Philippines and in the world today. We can blame social media, but ultimately, we also have to look inwards at ourselves.  Sometimes, we too propagate social injustices with our simple, unconscious actions.

    Our leaders as well have a responsibility. Unfortunately, the highest leader of the land, our incumbent President has not personified anything substantial to be emulated, but we are either gripped with fear, indifference or blind loyalty and let things be. Regarding his character alone, on TV for instance, our children watch our President curse and drop profanity in every statement likes there’s no tomorrow. They will grow up thinking that this is totally okay and cool, and then we wonder why we have dead kids. It is because we are becoming a Dead nation.

    Moreover, he has made rape jokes, sexist and sordid comments against women, demeaning statements against Pope Francis and the Church, but his supporters continue to make unfounded excuses for this behavior. Our journalists and media as well are being silenced with real threats – to livelihood and life. Those who attempt to speak out are punished without due process and are ridiculed in a dehumanizing manner – Senator Leila de Lima being the biggest example of this. Most importantly, he continues to justify his drug war and extra judicial killings through conjured up data and convoluted truths. Have we lost our sights on human rights, life and God? These scenarios seem all too familiar.

Parallelisms to Martial Law of the Marcos Regime

    We can draw many softer parallelisms of what is happening today to the atrocities of Martial Law under the 20-year Marcos dictatorship. Filipinos are truly quick to forget or love to choose to be ignorant. What I find truly unacceptable, that in this age where information is abundant and easily accessible, turns out many Filipinos, not just among the younger Millennials and Gen Z groups, but actually older people too, have a skewed version of Martial Law. They think it was a Golden Era of discipline and crime-free streets, not knowing about the countless and undocumented people who were imprisoned, murdered and tortured. To say the least, some do not even know Martial Law once existed in the Philippines. This ignorance and lack of information is not limited to just the uneducated, but persists even among private school educated Filipinos. Apparently, this part of Philippine history – Ninoy Aquino, Martial Law and the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolution is not really taught or emphasized in our education system. It is truly a tragedy because we Filipinos were the victors of this miraculous, peaceful revolt which ultimately toppled Marcos, and yet we have not been able write history as it should be.

    President Duterte was elected because he sold the idea that the Philippines can only be great again with an “iron-fisted” leader, the same dream that Marcos peddled to the Philippines. Today with President Duterte at the helm, the myth of the iron-fisted leader is again debunked, and now is an unfolding tragedy.

The Importance of Real, Personal Relationships

    The movie’s title, I’d like to believe, is a comment on the actual reality of extra judicial killings happening in the Philippines today, but the movie also tells us that being a Dead Kid means more than the literal sense. Perhaps we’ve all felt like a dead kid at some point in life. I personally know what it felt like to be one; I can say that I have felt it twice in my youth. I had lost my way, my purpose and felt dead inside. But what helped me conquer my demons? It was my support system composed of my family and various groups of friends. During my most vulnerable and weak moments, they had been there all along and instilled the strength I needed to bounce back. Very importantly as well, they were real friends who had the courage to intervene and tell me to my face when I was becoming the worst version of myself. You need these types of people – or you will really go through life thinking, either that you are completely alone or completely invincible.

    Many years later, now that I have a daughter, I know that I cannot shield her completely from the problems of the world, but I hope I can truly imbibe one of the most important qualities – and that is resilience. I know that like me, she will fail at things. She will get hurt. She will be rejected, at times, for no good reason. However, I want her to be tough, to be brave and rise to the occasion when needed. Giving up is not the answer. She must also remember to always be kind, fair and have integrity despite how unbelievable people can be. We are all dealt with a different deck of cards in life, but to be able to achieve that winning hand lies in you.

Generation Alpha

    Analysts have dubbed the Generation Alpha (Gen Alpha) as the generation that will succeed the Gen Zs. They are those born in 2010 up until the year 2025, supposedly the “children of the Millennials,” our children. I think about this movie Dead Kids, and then I think to myself that I do not want my daughter and our generation’s children to grow up with fractured values and distorted principles. Don’t you want to handover to your children, a world that you can be proud of?

    I am no expert, and I am no Mother Teresa, but I do know that as early as their formative years, we must be conscious and deliberate about the things we say and do – because they will mimic what they see. We must teach them what is morally wrong, even if it is deemed okay by society. The family unit is the very first thing that a child knows – so us as parents, or as older people wizened by life experiences, truly have that responsibility to set a good example. Education is also key for political consciousness and value formation.

    Like I said earlier, when I was going through tough times in my youth, what made all the difference were my family and friends. I was lucky enough to have grown up with the right group of friends – those that had a positive influence throughout my entire life. It was never about material things, but rather what was intangible and essential.

     We have to be very present and visible in our children’s lives – but to also give them sufficient space to grow and make mistakes. Of course, it is easier said than done – but the growing demographic of dead kids, both literally and figuratively, is today’s reality. I do not want to wake up one day and find that we have turned our children into Dead Kids.

[weekendwarriorblog]

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND November 15, 2019 – Ford Vs. Ferrari, Charlie’s Angels, The Good Liar, The Report and More!

Another week where I found myself falling behind on writing just because I have so much else going on. Sorry for the tardiness of this column… again.

In case you hadn’t heard, I’ve returned to my role as house manager at David Kwong’s Off-Broadway show “The Enigmatist” so that’s taking up some of the weekend I use for writing. It’s also awards season, which means I’m being invited to a ton more events that I don’t necessarily want to turn down. Plus there’s a little something called “Disney+” which I haven’t actually had much of a chance to get into.

That be as it may, the last few weekends have been so pitiful at the box office that things can only get better, right?

My favorite movie of the weekend, as well as the year, is James Mangold’s FORD V FERRARI (20thCentury Fox), starring Christian Bale as British racecar driver Ken Miles, who is hired by Matt Damon’s racecar designer Caroll Shelby to help him create a sportscar for the Ford company to race at Le Mans in 1963 with the sole intention of defeating regular winner Ferrari. It’s an amazing film – you can read my review below – which includes a fantastic cast that includes Caitrioni Balfe from Outlander, Noah Jupe (also in Honey Boy, currently in theaters), Jon Bernthal, Tracy Letts, Josh Lucas and more. I probably don’t have to say too much more about this because you can read my review below, but since it will be in my Top 5 for the year, it’s highly recommended and a movie that you will not want to miss in theaters.

My Review of Ford v Ferrari

I wish I was as bullish on Elizabeth Banks’ remake of CHARLIE’S ANGELS (Sony), co-starring Kristen Stewart, newcomer Ella Balinska and Naomi Scott from Aladdin, as well as Patrick Stewart, Djimon Hounsou, Sam Claflin (staying in asshole mode after co-starring in The Nightingale) and more. It’s a female-friendly version of the action-comedy that McG made in 2000 with a sequel called Charlie’s Angels: Fully Loaded in 2003. The latter is one of my personal guilty pleasures, even though it’s probably not a very good movie. As far as Elizabeth Banks’ movie?

Mini-Review: I really wanted to like this movie, mainly since I’ve been a fan of Elizabeth Banks for so long.  I really want her to shine as a filmmaker, especially in this case where she’s both written and directed this attempt to relaunch the popular ‘70s television show that often focused more on its stars T ‘n’ A than their brains and abiliites.

We meet two of the new Angels, Sabina (Kristen Stewart) and Jane (Ella Balinska), as they’re dealing with a horny millionaire in Brazil, played by Chris Pang from Crazy Rich Asians. Sabina is in the midst of pulling a big-time seduction on the sleezeball before Jane comes in with other ninja women to deal with his bodyguards.  That opening scene gives you a pretty good idea of what to expect from the movie, but then the needlessly overt and deliberate “girl power” opening credits is a bit worrying of the direction where things might be going.

We then meet Naomi Scott’s Elena Houghlin, a trod-upon programmer at a big corporation getting ready to release an Amazon Echo-like device that can do anything from powering an entire building to being weaponized in dangerous ways. She tries to tell her obnoxious and sexist supervisor, played by Nat Faxon, but he refuses to tell the big boss Alexander Brock (Sam Claflin). Elena turns to the Townsend Agency and its Angels to help her blow the whistle on how dangerous the device can be in the wrong hands, so her, Sabina and Jane proceed to break into the Brock Corporation to steal one of the devices.

That’s the basic and quite derivative premise, and frankly, it’s rarely enough to keep the viewer entertained, especially once you realize that the entire movie is just a means to introduce Naomi Scott’s character as an Angel.  This Townsend Agency isn’t just one small agency with a few women and one Bosley, as it has expanded worldwide with many, many Bosleys, including one retiring one played by Patrick Stewart.  You see, like the Kingsmen, Bosley is just a rank of handler in between “Charlie,” who apparently is a woman, and her Angels. Stewart’s Bosley is being replaced by a former Angel, played by Banks, but first, they go on a mission with another Bosley, played by Djimon Hounsou, whom has a close relationship with Jane. (Don’t get too used to him as he’s barely in the movie.)

There’s a lot to take in as all this information is thrown at you, including a number of homages to earlier Charlie’s Angels incarnations, but the biggest problem with the movie is the fact that Kristen Stewart just doesn’t have a lot of on-screen charm. Watching her spending an entire movie trying to be funny and sexy and failing at both – well, that’s one-third of the movie that just doesn’t work at all. Fortunately, the other actors are generally better. I was really impressed by newcomer Ella Balinska, who handles a lot of the best action scenes, and I also enjoyed seeing Scott playing a character so different from Princess Jasmine in Aladdin. Even so, the attempts at comedy in Charlie’s Angels frequently falls flat, except a few moments later on.

This leaves Banks in a position where she’s forced to lean quite heavily on her soundtrack and locations to keep things interesting. While Bryan Tyler’s soundtrack is pretty good overall, I really had no interest in the pop songs written specifically for the movie.

The overall issue is that Charlie’s Angels just doesn’t offer much beyond the very basics. The fact it essentially uses the same general idea that didn’t work in Men in Black International as its basis just makes the movie derivative of another Sony movie that fell flat.

Sure, mileage is going to vary with those who see Charlie’s Angels based on how much they’ll put up with from the lackluster Stewart as the lead, but this just seemed like an idea that was destined to fail from the beginning, regardless of who was directing it.

Rating: 6/10

Last as far as the wide releases go is THE GOOD LIAR (Warner Bros.), directed by Bill Condon (Beauty and the Beast) and starring Dame Helen Mirren and Sir Ian McKellen, a psychological thriller about a man who isn’t what he says he is, who makes the mistake of getting on Helen Mirren’s bad side.

Mini-Review: Sometimes, it’s nice going into a movie thinking you know what to expect and then be continually surprised as it pulls the rug from under you, not once or twice, but many, many times.

At first, Bill Condon’s psychological thriller seems like a nice movie about the relationship between an older couple who meet online – Helen Mirren’s Betty, a kindly widow with an overprotective grandson, who goes on a date with Ian McKellen’s Roy Courtnay, who is a lot more than meets the eye. We quickly learn that Roy is involved in a number of grifts in trying to steal mucho bucks from some very rough Russian sorts, but we also see that Roy can be just as tough and cruel. This is all going on as Betty and Roy are getting closer, her offering Roy a place to stay in the house she shares with her grandson Steve.  We know quite quickly that not everything is what it seems as far as Roy is concerned, but it’s the way we’ll learn the truth behind him and his relationship with Betty that keeps you on the edge while watching The Good Liar.

Obviously, the big draw for Bill Condon’s psychological thriller are his two fantastic actors, and neither of them disappoint, particularly Mirren, who is absolutely on fire with her performance. Since we already know that not everything about Roy is on the level, you would think that you have this film sussed, but that just isn’t the case. Even after a major revelation about Roy’s past, the relationship between him and Betty and her grandson Steven (a decently laid-back performance by Russell Tovey) just gets more interesting.

Unfortunately, I can’t say too much more about the third act where things really turn on their ear, and there’s some extremely disturbing revelations that might make the difference for some between liking or loving the movie. Me, I thought it was quite good, definitely better than similar thrillers like the recent Greta, which starts out with a suitably twisty premise but then fell flat. I was also surprised by how violent and even bloody The Good Liar gets, really earning its R-rating and not from language.  

The Good Liar is a movie full of surprises that, like its characters, is never what it seems. It may not be as good as some of Condon’s influences – Hitchcock the most obvious one – but few will be disappointed by the two hours they spend in the company of Mirren and McKellen.

Rating: 7/10

You can read more about the above movies and how I think they will fare over at The Beat.

LIMITED RELEASES

One limited release opening today I highly recommend is Scott Z. Burns’ THE REPORT(Amazon Studios) aka “The Torture Report,” an in-depth political thriller based on Daniel T Jones’ investigations into the CIA’s use of extreme torture to get torture from detainees in the name of national security.  Jones is beautifully played by Adam Driver in another one of his performances that really has made this a great year for the young actor as Jones is assigned by his boss, Senator Diane Feinstein (an equally brilliant performance by Annette Bening) to investigate the CIA’s use of torture techniques to get information from detainees.  This is an intensely brilliant bit of filmmaking from Burns, only directing his second feature after writing some great films for Steven Soderbergh, such as Contagion and Side Effects. (I wasn’t a big a fan of The Informant! Or the recent The Landromat.) But Burns clearly did his research to tell a story that has a lot of talking and exposition but also great filming and editing to keep things moving at a fast pace, which also can be attributed to the dramatic fireworks he gets out of a cast that’s an abundance of riches, including the likes of Moira Tierney, Corey Stoll, Tim Blake Nelson and other wonderful surprises. The Report offers another of the year’s most impressive ensembles, but it’s always kept centered on Driver’s Jones and his long journey to get the report he’s writing out to the public. Burns uses some great techniques to create tension without going overboard on the thriller aspects of this story, but this is a fantastic bit of investigative exposé work for a movie that isn’t a doc. If you miss it in theaters when it’s playing in two weeks, you can catch on Amazon Prime in a couple weeks, but I do recommend giving this a look when it’s in theaters if possible since it does require the type of concentration few have while watching movies at home.

I’ll have an interview with Burns over at Next Best Picture next week.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to catch It Comes at Night director Trey Edward Shults’ WAVES (A24) before opening, but it involves the journey of a suburban African-American family led by a domineering father (Sterling K. Brown) as they “navigate love, forgiveness and coming together in the aftermath of a loss.” (Sorry, that’s the best I can do without having seen the movie.) It stars Kelvin Harrison from Luce, Lucas Hedges, Taylor Russell and more.

I also seemed to have missed Swati Mhise’s THE WARRIOR QUEEN OF JHANSI (Roadside Attractions) – this is the running theme of this week’s column, by the way – but it looks like a cool biopic about the legendary Rani (or Queen) of Jhansi, a freedom fighter in 19thcentury India, who led her people into battle against the British Empire at the age of 24. It led to the shift of power that took down the notorious British East India Company and Queen Victoria’s reign over India. It’s opening moderately wide this week, possibly in as many as 300 theaters.

I also haven’t seen Mark Landsman’s doc SCANDALOUS (Magnolia), which explores the 60 years of the National Enquirerand it’s salacious and shocking stories.

A couple Netflix movies will get limited releases before their debut on Netflix. Jeremy Clapin’s French animated film I Lost My Body, based on the novel “Happy Hand” by Guillaume Laurant. It follows a hand as it explores the romance between a pizza delivery boy and his lady love, a librarian named Gabrielle. It seems to be opening at the Cinema Village in New York, and I assume somewhere in L.A. as well.

There’s also the French film Atlantics by Mati DIop, which won the Cannes Grand Jury prize, which is quite an achievement. Somehow, I managed to miss this at the New York Film Festival and haven’t had a single chance to see it since. Odd. It’s set in a suburb of Dakar where a 17-year-old girl named Ada is in love with a construction worker named Souleimayne, although she’s been promised to another man in a fixed marriage. After he disappears at sea, Souleimane and other workers return to get revenge on the people building the tower that has cast a shadow on the city. That will open at Film at Lincoln Center

I also didn’t get a chance to see Amp Wong and Ji Zhao’s Chinese animated film White Snake (GKIDS), which will open in L.A. at the Landmark NuartFriday and then in New York City on November 29. It’s a classic fable about a young woman named Blanca who is saved by a snake catcher named Xuan, the two of them going on a journey to discover her true identity, as she’s lost her memory. According to its PR, it offers “a sumptuous tale of trickster demons, deadly mythical beasts, assassins, wuxia action, and the promise of eternal love.” So basically, everything that I look for in a movie and life.

An intriguing doc I saw at the Tribeca Film Festival was Matt Wolff’s Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project (Zeitgeist/Kino Lorber), opening at the MetrographFriday with LOTS of QnAs planned. It documents the thirty-year efforts of African-American left wing activist Marion Stokes on recording television 24 hours a day, and that includes almost every channel, becoming one of the most impressive television archivists with over 70,000 VHS tapes at the time of her death. Wolff edits the footage together to tell an amazing story.

Opening Wednesday at Film Forumis Annabelle Atanou’s debut feature MICKEY AND THE BEAR (Utopia), which takes place in the mining community of Anaconda, Montana with newcomer Camila Morrone playing a teenager who must care for her father Hank (played by James Badge Dale), who is afflicted by PTSD from serving in the Iraq war and in grief from the death of his wife.s

BAMhas the exclusive New York run on Brett Story’s documentary The Hottest August, which deals with the future of New York City following Hurricane Sandy and a particularly hot summer in 2017, and how climate change affects the city’s many denizens. It played at this years’s BAMCinemaFest and will include a repertory series called “In This Climate: Brett Story Selects” which unfortunately ends tonight.

A few other movies out this weekend in various combinations of theatrical and On Demand and digital that I just won’t have time to right about:

Feast of the Seven Fishes (Shout! Studios) The Shed (RLJE Films) Bluebird (Cleopatra Entertainment) Line of Duty (Saban Films/Lionsgate) A Reindeer’s Journey (Screen Media) To Kid or Not to Kid  (Helpman Productions)

LOCAL/REGIONL FESTIVALS

Not too many festivals of note, although Doc-NYC ends tomorrow with a few last films. If you’re in Atlanta, you can check out the Buried Alive Film Fest, a straight-up horror film festival that opened last night with the 4thAnnual Sinema Challenge for horror shorts. It will include a wide variety of features and shorts running through the weekend.

STREAMING AND CABLE

Lots of stuff hitting Netflix this week, including the animated Klaus, which had a short theatrical release last week. Also Earthquake Bird, the movie I haven’t seen and missed in the column a couple weeks back hits the streaming service after a short theatrical run. It’s a romantic drama that stars Alicia Vikander and Riley Keough, but that’s pretty much all I know.Another thing that I haven’t watched, and it’s a great shame considering what a bit Peter Morgan stan I am, but The Crown will begin its 3rdseason on Netflix with the wonderful Olivia Colman in the role of Queen Elizabeth, and man, do I need to catch up on this show.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

The Metrograph begins an intriguing new series this weekend called “On the Process,” a collection of docs and narratives about famous painters and their process, including Raul Ruiz’s 2007 film Klimt, Derek Jarman’s 1986 film Caravaggio, and more to come as it runs through November 20. Metrograph is also continuing its “Noah Baumbach in Residence” series with screenings of Baumbach’s 1997 debut Mr. Jealousy on Sunday, followed by a screening of Peter Bogdonavich’s Saint Jack (1979). On Saturday, the Metrograph is also screening The Complete Works of Edward Owens, a collection of the queer Black artist’s short films from 1966 to 1967, and then on Sunday is a 30thanniversary screening of Isaac Julien’s Looking for Langstonwith Julien in person. Welcome To Metrograph: Redux continues this weekend with Peter Cohen’s 1989 doc The Architecture of Doom and Cinda Firestone’s 1974 film Attica. Late Nites at Metrograph  will show Bong Joon-Ho’s The Host (2006) a couple more times and also show Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995), starring Johnny Depp. This weekend’s Playtime: Family Matinees  is Joe Dante’s Gremlinsfrom 1984. Downtown 81 continues, probably forever?

THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

Glad to see Tarantino’s rep theater get back on track, and you can catch a double feature of Medium Cool (1969) and The Don is Dead (1973) tonight. Friday’s Cronenberg matinee is Videodrome, a supremely weird movie starring Debbie Harry, while the weekend’s Kiddee Matinee is Jason and the Argonauts (1963), featuring amazing stop motion visual FX from the late Ray Harryhausen. Saturday night’s midnight movie is Kevin Tenney’s 1990 movie Peacemaker, starring the late Robert Forster, with Tenney in person. Monday’s 2pm matinee of David Lynch’s Lost Highway is already sold out. Monday night’s double feature is The Stalking Moon (1968) and 1970’s Pieces of Dreams, both starring Forster.

FILM FORUM (NYC):

Thursday will be your last chance to see the new DCP’s of Yasujiro Ozu’sTokyo Story and Toyko Twilight, but that’s mainly because the Film Forum is starting a new series calledThe Romanians: 30 Years of Cinema Revolution, a 12-day series showing some of the best from that country, some which have been seen in the States like Cristi Puiu’s The Death of Mr. Lazarescu from 2005 and Corneliu Porumboiu’s 12:08 East of Bucharest from 2006 and many others that have not. My knowledge of Romanian cinema is not good enough to recommend anything specifically but there should be some good stuff in there. Another series beginning this weekend is a longer-running series called Lee Grant: Actor. Filmmaker. Running through February and this weekend screening Sidney Poitier: One Bright Light and Norman Jewison’s 1967 film In the Heat of the Night. This weekend’s Film Forum Jr. is George Roy Hill’s 1967 movie Thoroughly Modern Millie starring Julie Andrews, Mary Tyler Moore and Carol Channing.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

Well, at least the Egyptian finishes its run of Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman(not repertory!) to begin a series called “Nitrate Nights 2019,” which as it sounds is about showing rare nitrate 35mm prints of film like Powell and Pressburger’s Disney film Gone to Earth from 1950 on Friday, Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945) on Saturday, and then the master’s 1940 film Rebecca with special guests Christopher Nolan and Jared Case of the George Eastman Museum, that provided the print for the series. Otto Preminger’s 1940 film Laura screens Sunday, also with guests, and then Sunday night, Alexander Payne presents Edmund Goulding’s 1948 thriller Nightmare Alley, which Guillermo del Toro is in the process of remaking. Eddie Murphy will be in person at the Aero on Tuesday to show his new movie My Name is Dolemite in a double feature with Frank Oz’s 1999 film Bowfinger, both in 35mm.

AERO  (LA):

Aero is mostly doing awards-campaigning screenings of movies like Her Smell (with Elisabeth Moss in person!) and a FREE 70mm screening of Joker with Todd Phillips, but let’s get to the repertory stuff. At midnight Friday, the AERO will screen the sci-fi “classic” Zardoz (1974) starring Sean Connery. Saturday night is a double feature of David Finch’s Wild at Heart and Blue Velvet as part of “Laura Dern: A Life on Screen” with Dern appearing in person! That series continues Sunday with a double feature of Rambling Rose (1991) and Small Talk (1985), that one with Rambling Rose director Martha Coolidge in person. On Tuesday, there’s a matinee screening of Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven as part of “The Hidden Lives of Terrence Malick,” which makes reference to Malick’s upcoming film A Hidden Life.

MOMA  (NYC):

MOMA is beginning its annual “The Contenders” series showing a number of smaller movies you may have missed, as well as continuing Vision Statement: Early Directorial Workswith a number of first films by foreign filmmakers, on Sunday showing Mira Nair’s 1988 film Salaam Bombay! MOMA also has a number of weekly series but since I don’t think this column will be up by Weds next week, we’ll have to explore them later. One cool thing they’re starting is Open Door Fridays, and this week they will be showing the Maysles Brothers’ concert movie classic Gimme Shelter all day long, which is free with a ticket to the museum.

Modern Matinees: Iris Barry’s History of Film also continues with more silent films from the 20s with piano accompaniment every weekday afternoon at 1:30pm.

FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER (NYC):

FilmLinc’s new series this weekend is Rebel Spirit: The Films of Patricia Mazuy, whose work I’m sadly not familiar with, so you can check out what’s playing here. Next week is the big series that I’ve been waiting for!

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

Sadly, the Quad has been slowing down on its series, but this weekend, it will be bringing out a 4k restoration of Buster Keaton’s 1926 film Battling Butler, as well as a 2k restoration of his 1924 film The Navigator. Both films are preceded by shorts.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

Weekend Classics: May All Your Christmases be Noir shows the late Harold Ramis’ 2005 The Ice Harvest, starring John Cusack ad Billy Bob Thornton, while  Waverly Midnights: Spy Games will screen the original 1962 The Manchurian Candidate, starring Frank Sinatra. Late Night Favorites: Autumn 2019will show Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fictionand Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange this weekend.

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

MOMI in Astoria begins a new series called Moments of Grace: The Collected Terrence MalickFriday, which runs through December 8 and is pretty self-explanatory. Friday, it’s showing Badlands (1973), Saturday is Days of Heaven (1978)and Stuart Rosenberg’s 1972 film Pocket Money (written by Malick), plus the first two will be shown on Sunday as well. (If you miss this series or don’t feel like going to Astoria, four of Malick’s first movies will be shown at Metrograph in December.) On Saturday, MOMI is also screening the 2017 animated The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales for its Family Matinee, plus it’s also showing Ildikó Enyedi’s My Twentieth Century (1989) in a new restoration.

ROXY CINEMA (NYC)

Tonight, the Roxy is showing Francis Ford Coppola’s 1986 film Peggy Sue Got Married, starring Nicolas Cage and Cathleen Turner, plus tomorrow, it will show Coppola’s The Cotton Club Encoreone more time.

ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE BROOKLYN (NYC)

Next week’s Terror Tuesday is the 1986 film The Wraith while the Weird Wednesday is Ralph Bakshi’s half-animated 1992 film Cool World.

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART  (LA):

This Friday’s midnight movie is Akira.

Next week, hopefully I’ll get back on track in terms of timing re: posting this column (fingers crossed!) The big movie is Disney’s Frozen 2, which I won’t have seen.  Great.

#WhatToWatchThisWeekend CharliesAngels FordvFerrari TheReport TheGoodLiar Repertory movies Reviews

[ramajmedia]

10 Things From The Little Mermaid That Have Aged Poorly

The Little Mermaid is one of Disney's most successful films of all time. It's filled with gorgeous animation and an incredibly catchy soundtrack that will have you singing "Part of Your World" for hours on end. But although this film is loaded with excellent cinematic content, there are a whole bunch of elements inside the Disney film that have aged quite poorly over the years since its initial release.

RELATED: 10 Little Mermaid Logic Memes That Are Too Hilarious For Words

What are some of the reasons why this film hasn't aged as well as we would hope for? Read the list below to find out!

10 A WOMAN SHOULD GIVE UP HER VOICE FOR A MAN

The message behind The Little Mermaid is pretty loud and clear. Disney seems to comfortably promote the idea that a woman should accept the fact that if she wants to find true love, she must first get rid of her voice. That's pretty much as sexist as it can possibly get, folks. Ursula even says it herself in "Poor Unfortunate Souls" when she sings, "On land it's much preferred for ladies not to say a word." The worst part is, Ariel is willing to sacrifice it all for a man she hasn't even met.

RELATED: The 10 Most Anticipated Upcoming Movie Musicals

To make matters even worse, the little mermaid's voice is her most cherished talent. She loves singing more than anything but she won't be able to do that anymore because she has to make things work with the first dude she sets her eyes on.

9 YOU SHOULD TOTALLY MARRY A DUDE YOU JUST MET

Ariel and Eric get married after a couple of dates. Oh, and they also never had a single conversation before deciding to tie the knot. Sounds like the set-up to an everlasting bond and connection for better or worse, right kids? Right? Wrong! This common Disney trope has been actively debunked by more recent Disney Princess movies such as Frozen, Tangled, and Enchanted.

RELATED: Frozen 2: 10 Things You Missed In The Trailer

Frozen even goes so far to include the line "You can't marry a man you just met." Right on. If a Disney movie were to come out today with the prince and princess getting married after a couple of hours of knowing each other, it would most likely be pitted as old fashioned as well as outdated.

8 YOU SHOULD ABSOLUTELY GET MARRIED AT SIXTEEN

You could argue that The Little Mermaid takes place in a different era when getting married at an earlier age was more common and acceptable, but this is clearly an '80s movie, y'all. Just take a look at Ariel's hairstyle. Does that look like the kind of hairstyle a woman in the 1800s would have? What about those giveaway shoulder pads?

Most kids don't know the history of marriage throughout the ages so why would they have our girl Ariel get married at the age where she'd be a sophomore in high school? Ariel should be finishing up Driver's Ed, not picking out wedding cakes! Why couldn't they just bump up her age by a couple of years? If she were eighteen it would still be kind of creepy, but at least she would be considered an adult. She's not even old enough yet to see a rated-R movie, let alone marry a man she knows absolutely nothing about.

7 BEING A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESSWOMAN MAKES YOU EVIL

It's becoming more and more apparent as we get older that Ursula was not the evil sea witch we once perceived her to be as children. Ursula tells Ariel exactly what to expect within their mutually agreed upon bargain deal and the little mermaid signs a contract where she clearly accepts this offer. Ursula has been straight up the whole time about how things will play out. Ursula also subscribes to the belief that a woman's voice is much more powerful than her physical appearance which is why Ariel loses her voice as opposed to her figure.

RELATED: The 6 Best (And 4 Worst) Disney Couples

The Sea Witch is simply a successful businesswoman who understands how the real world works. When she sings "she who holds her tongue gets the man," this turns out to be accurate in the film. Eric falls madly in love with Ariel when she no longer has a voice...  and she ends up getting the man.

6 GIVE UP YOUR WHOLE LIFE AND FAMILY TO BE WITH A HOT GUY

Not only does Ariel give up her voice and her fins, but she gives up her entire life to be with a stranger. Her entire family lives down in the sea including her father and her (many) sisters. Ariel doesn't even send a quick goodbye text. She's out of the sea as fast as possible so she can fulfill her true destiny of macking on some blue-eyed stud. Doesn't she care about her family at all? What about Flounder? What about Sebastian?

The morals in this Disney classic are just riddled with issues that would never fly in today's day and age. Hopefully, the remake will fix up these problematic elements.

5 "UNDER THE SEA" PROMOTES RACIAL STEREOTYPES

Unfortunately, the cheery song we'd sing along to throughout childhood is chock full of racial stereotypes. The whole point of the song is for Sebastian to convince Ariel that being lazy while under the sea is a much better lifestyle than working on the land. He sings the lyrics "Up on the shore they work all day, out in the sun they slave away."

His character is indicating that life is much better when you don't have to put in any effort, a racial stereotype for his character who is clearly Jamaican. The rest of the fish in the scene are the only characters in the film who are not white and they are all condoning the belief that life is better when you don't have to work. Lame move, Disney. Lame move.

4 URSULA'S BADASS TRAITS PERCEIVED AS EVIL

Because the sea witch is meant to be the villain of the film, we are supposed to go against everything she stands for and perceive all of her traits as "evil." Her traits as a woman include (but are not limited to): strong, outspoken, opinionated, brilliant, and independent. She is also a total workaholic. This is supposed to allude to the actions of an evil woman, according to Disney.

RELATED: 10 Clueless Quotes That Will Have You Totally Bugging

Ariel, on the other hand, teaches us that in order for a woman to be perceived as alluring, she must "hold her tongue" while simultaneously looking beautiful at all times. She is the protagonist, so we are meant to learn from her actions rather than the sea witch. Isn't that kind of sort of (incredibly) problematic?

3 A SERIOUS LACK OF FEMALE DIALOGUE

When The Little Mermaid was released in the 1980s, a good chunk of people percieved Ariel's character as progressive for a Disney Princess because unlike the princesses before her, Ariel actually has her own dreams and desires while actively pursuing them. Even if those desires revolved around a man, at least we're getting to see a princess rebel against "the system" in order to get what she wants out of life.

Yet despite the initial praise, The Little Mermaid was the first of many Disney Princess movies to have significantly less female dialogue as opposed to male dialogue. Even though the titular character is female, 68% of the movie's dialogue goes to the male characters. What's up with that?

2 SEXUALIZED DISNEY PRINCESSES

Ariel is considered to be the most sexualized Disney Princess due to the way she is drawn out by animators. She is only sixteen years old yet this doesn't change the fact that she has been designed in a manner that doesn't feel appropriate to both her age and the age of viewership that this film caters to.

Her body proportions are also extremely unrealistic to what most women look like in real life, which could lead to insecurities and poor body image issues within viewers.

1 KING TRITON IS THE WORST FATHER EVER

For some reason we are supposed to side with King Triton in this film and see him as some sort of Albus Dumbledore type with his endless wisdom. Yet after watching the film, you can swiftly come to the conclusion that King Triton is an overprotective father with serious anger issues. He knows how much his daughter adores all her "thingamabobs" aka "muggle items."

Yet despite the fact that collecting these shore-gadgets is her passion, Triton goes ahead and destroys her whole collection in an effort to teach Ariel a lesson. Doesn't he know that this sort of thing will only provoke a teenage girl to rebel even more against him? He has a bunch of other teenage daughters, so he should definitely know this by now.

NEXT: The Little Mermaid: 10 Biggest Changes Disney Made To The Original Fairy Tale

source https://screenrant.com/things-little-mermaid-disney-movie-aged-poorly/

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[thebrewstorian]

Feminism and the Beer Industry Pt. 2: Marketing with and to women

One of the most cited pieces of evidence of sexism in the brewing industry besides statistics on women making, selling and drinking beer is the presence of sexist labels. This topic is hotly debated among consumers and brewers, with people either acknowledging the problem or rebuking that these ads are all in good fun. This debate is a puzzle to watch in that it reflects the sexist culture we’ve all been raised to accept or internalize, which in turn poses questions about the history of sexist advertising and its various manifestations, along with where the boundary is on appropriateness of sexualized ads. In a similar vein, we must also examine the attempts of brewing companies to advertise beer towards women, along with the difference in craft brewer culture and beer consumer culture. There will still be controversy, because people will always have differences in perspective, but hopefully we can bring some clarity on why the way we market our beer matters.

While we were on our way to an oral history back in March, Tiah told me about an article from the All About Beer magazine calling people to action on addressing sexist beer labels. What was disturbing to her was not the article itself, but the comment section to it. While many people agreed with the author (who notably was a man), many others across genders complained to him about writing a silly piece. These complaints ranged from stating these labels are just jokes and that no one “becomes a rapist” from seeing sexist ads, to accusations that the author was politicizing culture and taking away the fun of saying mean things. As a woman and a (sort-of) educated feminist, I was just as disturbed as Tiah by these comments, but not surprised. Sexism and nonchalance about discrimination are ingrained into our culture, and there may always be people fighting for the current status quo. I did notice a few things, however. I found that many of the people calling this a moot issue were men, who have the privilege of not experiencing sexism and therefore wouldn’t notice the larger impact of these labels (an example of the logical fallacy argumentum ad ignorantiam). The general point that refutes this complaint about sexism being “just words” is both in the old discussion that words hurt, and in the data that advertising and media influence our attitudes towards different things. Seeing gang rape in a fashion advertisement won’t make you turn around and rape someone yourself, but it allows you to normalize this phenomenon nonetheless (just as medieval imagery normalized alewives as evil in Pt. 1). Claiming derogatory language as just words also invalidates the experiences of those who have suffered through date rape (Date Grape), fat-shaming (Phat Bottom) or fetishization based on race (Once You Go Black). Such labels and our acceptance of them normalize and promote the rape culture we’ve been so entrenched in, a social and safety issue that will continue to be “politicized” and called out until we can push it away.

Reading such articles and the discussions surrounding them brings up the larger issue of how we represent women in advertisements, and what these representations are really selling to us. Let it be said, sexist portrayals of women in ads and other media are common and have been around for centuries, but how they and their bodies have been shown has shifted numerous times. In Medieval times, women were held to a symbolic ideal of a desexualized provider of sustenance and supporter of men. Women who challenged this ideal, such as alewives, were either depicted as terribly ugly or temptingly beautiful. In both cases, though, they were treated as highly sexual, wicked and sinful people. The point of note in these symbols is the representation of female sexuality. Sex is considered a private or taboo affair, uncomfortable and avoided in education historically and today (in some places). It’s also been used for violence, and for creating power dynamics across gender, race and sexual orientation. In these dynamics, men are hypersexual and aggressive, while women are submissive and desexualized aside from the purpose of bearing children. Even if women are sexualized, they are made so for the purpose of pleasing the male gaze as objects. I’ve selected a few examples of this from the GenderAds collection below. 

Recently, women have been treated less as sexual objects and more as hypersexual subjects with agency in ads, such as the midriff, the vengeful woman and the hot lesbian. In these three marketing stereotypes, women are choosing to be sexual for their own empowerment or to dominate men. These women live in a reality where men are their enemies, or objects to be judged for their appearance and hurt for their sins. According to Rosalind Gill, these women were designed through taking the idea of empowerment from feminism while ignoring its critique of objectification in favor of the self-objectified characters in porn. It misconstrues feminism as man-hating, catty and heteronormative through disguising it with the emphasis on choosing to be sexual. And in this misconstruction, such ads prove to not be feminist at all, but heterosexist and racist.

So what do these stereotypes mean to us, as consumers and as beer lovers? One of the things I’ve noticed in reviewing oral histories with women like Robyn Schumacher, and in reading various accounts by women in the brewing industry, is that there seems to be a disconnect between the brewers and the consumers on feminist values surrounding the brewing industry. Schumacher, when asked about her experiences as a woman in the brewing industry, explained that the majority of men she’s worked with have been kind and welcoming to her (which numerous women brewers have mentioned). On the flip side, we see breweries (many of them macrobreweries) marketing their work using women’s bodies and rude names like “bitch” and “dumb blonde” to sell their work. Not only that, but some people say that it doesn’t matter if these ads and labels are sexist because “it’s all about what the consumer wants.” The beer name Date Grape was even crowdsourced from the public. These claims and actions are problematic because while they may invite more men to drink the beer, they alienate many of the women who are looking to explore new beers as a growing and admittedly crucial market base. One of the reasons craft cider has been able to grow so rapidly compared to beer, according to Aaron Sarnoff-Wood from 2 Towns, is that it’s marketed as a gender-neutral drink.

While these sexist labels exclude many women from the beer industry, they also have an effect on men and what we perceive as masculine. One of the main advertising trends noted by Everyday Feminism guest writer Dr. Nerdlove is the promotion of hypermasculinity through ads. Defined as an exaggeration of the male stereotype, hypermasculinity promotes maleness as a fight for dominance and the use of women as trophies. This culture is targeted at men’s insecurities, both as young people trying to find their identity and older people who are discouraged. Such hypermasculine ads capitalize of images of rape, violence and ruggedness, and Dr. Nerdlove brings up that advertisements are designed to influence you into buying things, and so their underlying messages about sexism and other forms of discrimination influence us too, consciously or subconsciously. So while male brewers may treat their female colleagues as equals in the workplace, they may also think that using a sexist label is artistic and funny rather than problematic. Ultimately, this all ties back to the deep connection between sexism and capitalism, which has been fought by feminists for its androcentrism and analyzed as a deeply gendered structure.

But what about beers directed at women, like “Chick beer” or “Animee?” While these beers seem to be made with the good intention of encouraging more women to try beer, they are also considered offensive by consumers and brewers alike. The ad for Animee below shows a few reasons why. The image depicts three thin women dressed in feminine clothing, balancing on the tops of the beer bottles. The beers are light, colorful and made in three flavors that sound like wine. The problem with such a beer is that it preys upon the body insecurities women are taught to internalize while avoiding the strong flavors that are considered masculine. Something to note about this beer in comparison to the microbrewery product “Chick Beer” is the difference in motivation for making this segregated product. Animee was designed to tap into the market of women beer drinkers, while Chick Beer was made to encourage more women to try craft beer and get excited about it. The corporate beer was for profit, while the craft one had more social justifications. The other main difference is that Animee flopped, while Chick Beer has actually done fairly well. This difference is reflected in the audiences they were selling to. Animee was designed for British drinkers, while Chick Beer was for the southern US (where craft beer isn’t as common). If you have a female market that already knows its beer preferences and expertise, it won’t be impressed by corporate ploys, while women who are nervous to go to beer festivals will feel encouraged by something designed exclusively for them. The point is, know your audience.

As I wrote in the first post, what does all this information about markets and marketing mean for bringing women into the beer industry? As before, representation is key. Beer is a gender-neutral product that’s historically helped blur social roles and unify people, and it should be treated as such. Now, this doesn’t mean we have to abandon sexual beer names, but if we want to include more people in beer culture, these names should be gender-neutral and inclusive (ie “Smokin hot bod” from a commenter on the All About Beer article). We must also be thoughtful when we criticize such labels and consider the intentions behind them, such as with “Panty Peeler” (which was named by a woman to represent female freedom). The other thing to do is educate consumers. As one commenter mentioned, successful brewers are flexible to making what their market wants. If we choose to “vote with our wallets” (as Lisa Morrison said) and avoid the beers that offend us, then the breweries behind them will be change to match their markets or fall away. When we sexualize women in advertising and overall media, we take away the interpretation that women are anything more than these sexual objects or creatures. We fail to see them in any nuance as human beings, which in turn makes it difficult to take them seriously as brewers or beer lovers. Through focusing on beer quality and creativity outside of the stereotypes we’ve created and overused in capitalist systems, we begin to normalize beer and the brewing industry as something for everyone. 

While I tried to be all-encompassing in this second post, I will again admit that I’ve left some things out and may not have addressed all the facets of this issue. Here are a few of my additional questions and comments, and I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on them:

Speaking of offensive ads, I wanted to address the Heineken ad “Worlds Apart.” When I first watched this, I admittedly liked it for highlighting how beer can bring people together across identities. Later, however, I became aware of how problematic it was through my Facebook friends’ anger on how they put a transgender person in danger and generalized the complicated issue of arguments between people with different views (I want to check my privilege as a cis-woman for not recognizing this initially). This example, among those using “femvertising,” bring up a larger question: to what extent can feminism and social justice be used to advertise products, and is it even appropriate at all? Who gets to use feminism in advertising, and when does it become a sexist caricature of feminism?

When did sexism become profitable, as well as using people’s insecurities?

There’s always been conflict between capitalism and feminism because of the androcentrism of such an economy. 2nd wave feminists were unable to alter the sexism of this system, so the focus shifted to recognition of women and their rights. As women become more and more economically independent and involved, their input into capitalism through attitudes about sexist labels is one way to alter the “deeply gendered structures” of such an economy. The approach of later feminist waves towards sexism has been through cultural roots for discrimination, and how we consume craft beer is a cultural way of approaching an economic issue.

How do breweries use social media to advertise their products, and how does this impact the next generation of beer drinkers?

Where did the stereotype of the beer drinker as a white man with a flannel shirt and a beard come from? 

How did sex and sexuality become so taboo, and what are the historical, cultural and religious contexts behind its use in power dynamics?

~Gillian

If you want to learn more about this topic, here are some of the sources I read for this post:

Gill, R. (2008). Empowerment/sexism: Figuring female sexual agency in contemporary advertising. Feminism and Psychology, 18(1), pp. 35-60. doi: 10.1177/0959353507084950

Infante, D. (2015) The 13 Most Sexist Names and Labels in Craft Beer. https://www.thrillist.com/drink/nation/sexist-beer-labels-and-names-in-craft-beer

Fraser, N. (2012). Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History: An Introduction. FMSHWP-2012-17. https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00725055/document

http://reason.com/blog/2016/10/05/panty-peeler-beer

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/drink/2015/07/craft_beer_sexism_labels_like_raging_bitch_and_happy_ending_only_alienate.html

#women in beer #sexism #feminism #marketing #mass media #advertising #discrimination #controversy #logical fallacies #beer #brewing #beer industry #women in advertising #sexuality

[ramajmedia]

10 Things From The Little Mermaid That Have Aged Poorly

The Little Mermaid is one of Disney's most successful films of all time. It's filled with gorgeous animation and an incredibly catchy soundtrack that will have you singing "Part of Your World" for hours on end. But although this film is loaded with excellent cinematic content, there are a whole bunch of elements inside the Disney film that have aged quite poorly over the years since its initial release.

RELATED: 10 Little Mermaid Logic Memes That Are Too Hilarious For Words

What are some of the reasons why this film hasn't aged as well as we would hope for? Read the list below to find out!

10 A WOMAN SHOULD GIVE UP HER VOICE FOR A MAN

The message behind The Little Mermaid is pretty loud and clear. Disney seems to comfortably promote the idea that a woman should accept the fact that if she wants to find true love, she must first get rid of her voice. That's pretty much as sexist as it can possibly get, folks. Ursula even says it herself in "Poor Unfortunate Souls" when she sings, "On land it's much preferred for ladies not to say a word." The worst part is, Ariel is willing to sacrifice it all for a man she hasn't even met.

RELATED: The 10 Most Anticipated Upcoming Movie Musicals

To make matters even worse, the little mermaid's voice is her most cherished talent. She loves singing more than anything but she won't be able to do that anymore because she has to make things work with the first dude she sets her eyes on.

9 YOU SHOULD TOTALLY MARRY A DUDE YOU JUST MET

Ariel and Eric get married after a couple of dates. Oh, and they also never had a single conversation before deciding to tie the knot. Sounds like the set-up to an everlasting bond and connection for better or worse, right kids? Right? Wrong! This common Disney trope has been actively debunked by more recent Disney Princess movies such as Frozen, Tangled, and Enchanted.

RELATED: Frozen 2: 10 Things You Missed In The Trailer

Frozen even goes so far to include the line "You can't marry a man you just met." Right on. If a Disney movie were to come out today with the prince and princess getting married after a couple of hours of knowing each other, it would most likely be pitted as old fashioned as well as outdated.

8 YOU SHOULD ABSOLUTELY GET MARRIED AT SIXTEEN

You could argue that The Little Mermaid takes place in a different era when getting married at an earlier age was more common and acceptable, but this is clearly an '80s movie, y'all. Just take a look at Ariel's hairstyle. Does that look like the kind of hairstyle a woman in the 1800s would have? What about those giveaway shoulder pads?

Most kids don't know the history of marriage throughout the ages so why would they have our girl Ariel get married at the age where she'd be a sophomore in high school? Ariel should be finishing up Driver's Ed, not picking out wedding cakes! Why couldn't they just bump up her age by a couple of years? If she were eighteen it would still be kind of creepy, but at least she would be considered an adult. She's not even old enough yet to see a rated-R movie, let alone marry a man she knows absolutely nothing about.

7 BEING A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESSWOMAN MAKES YOU EVIL

It's becoming more and more apparent as we get older that Ursula was not the evil sea witch we once perceived her to be as children. Ursula tells Ariel exactly what to expect within their mutually agreed upon bargain deal and the little mermaid signs a contract where she clearly accepts this offer. Ursula has been straight up the whole time about how things will play out. Ursula also subscribes to the belief that a woman's voice is much more powerful than her physical appearance which is why Ariel loses her voice as opposed to her figure.

RELATED: The 6 Best (And 4 Worst) Disney Couples

The Sea Witch is simply a successful businesswoman who understands how the real world works. When she sings "she who holds her tongue gets the man," this turns out to be accurate in the film. Eric falls madly in love with Ariel when she no longer has a voice...  and she ends up getting the man.

6 GIVE UP YOUR WHOLE LIFE AND FAMILY TO BE WITH A HOT GUY

Not only does Ariel give up her voice and her fins, but she gives up her entire life to be with a stranger. Her entire family lives down in the sea including her father and her (many) sisters. Ariel doesn't even send a quick goodbye text. She's out of the sea as fast as possible so she can fulfill her true destiny of macking on some blue-eyed stud. Doesn't she care about her family at all? What about Flounder? What about Sebastian?

The morals in this Disney classic are just riddled with issues that would never fly in today's day and age. Hopefully, the remake will fix up these problematic elements.

5 "UNDER THE SEA" PROMOTES RACIAL STEREOTYPES

Unfortunately, the cheery song we'd sing along to throughout childhood is chock full of racial stereotypes. The whole point of the song is for Sebastian to convince Ariel that being lazy while under the sea is a much better lifestyle than working on the land. He sings the lyrics "Up on the shore they work all day, out in the sun they slave away."

His character is indicating that life is much better when you don't have to put in any effort, a racial stereotype for his character who is clearly Jamaican. The rest of the fish in the scene are the only characters in the film who are not white and they are all condoning the belief that life is better when you don't have to work. Lame move, Disney. Lame move.

4 URSULA'S BADASS TRAITS PERCEIVED AS EVIL

Because the sea witch is meant to be the villain of the film, we are supposed to go against everything she stands for and perceive all of her traits as "evil." Her traits as a woman include (but are not limited to): strong, outspoken, opinionated, brilliant, and independent. She is also a total workaholic. This is supposed to allude to the actions of an evil woman, according to Disney.

RELATED: 10 Clueless Quotes That Will Have You Totally Bugging

Ariel, on the other hand, teaches us that in order for a woman to be perceived as alluring, she must "hold her tongue" while simultaneously looking beautiful at all times. She is the protagonist, so we are meant to learn from her actions rather than the sea witch. Isn't that kind of sort of (incredibly) problematic?

3 A SERIOUS LACK OF FEMALE DIALOGUE

When The Little Mermaid was released in the 1980s, a good chunk of people percieved Ariel's character as progressive for a Disney Princess because unlike the princesses before her, Ariel actually has her own dreams and desires while actively pursuing them. Even if those desires revolved around a man, at least we're getting to see a princess rebel against "the system" in order to get what she wants out of life.

Yet despite the initial praise, The Little Mermaid was the first of many Disney Princess movies to have significantly less female dialogue as opposed to male dialogue. Even though the titular character is female, 68% of the movie's dialogue goes to the male characters. What's up with that?

2 SEXUALIZED DISNEY PRINCESSES

Ariel is considered to be the most sexualized Disney Princess due to the way she is drawn out by animators. She is only sixteen years old yet this doesn't change the fact that she has been designed in a manner that doesn't feel appropriate to both her age and the age of viewership that this film caters to.

Her body proportions are also extremely unrealistic to what most women look like in real life, which could lead to insecurities and poor body image issues within viewers.

1 KING TRITON IS THE WORST FATHER EVER

For some reason we are supposed to side with King Triton in this film and see him as some sort of Albus Dumbledore type with his endless wisdom. Yet after watching the film, you can swiftly come to the conclusion that King Triton is an overprotective father with serious anger issues. He knows how much his daughter adores all her "thingamabobs" aka "muggle items."

Yet despite the fact that collecting these shore-gadgets is her passion, Triton goes ahead and destroys her whole collection in an effort to teach Ariel a lesson. Doesn't he know that this sort of thing will only provoke a teenage girl to rebel even more against him? He has a bunch of other teenage daughters, so he should definitely know this by now.

NEXT: The Little Mermaid: 10 Biggest Changes Disney Made To The Original Fairy Tale

source https://screenrant.com/things-little-mermaid-disney-movie-aged-poorly/

#screenrant